Section "Musicology, Theater and Performance Studies"

This section brings together doctoral students who are working on performance-related practices or whose PhD theses deal with topics in Musicology, Literary Studies or Theater Studies. Performance Studies – in its diverse sociological, anthropological, ethnographic or art studies approaches – defines the transdisciplinary range of this section. At the same time, the perspective on culture as something produced through actions and interactions provides the common dominator shared by research that is more closely tied to Musicology, Literary Studies or Theatre Studies as traditional academic disciplines. Core research questions in the section arise from the interweaving of culture and people, drawing on Dwight Conquergood’s insight that “Culture performs and articulates us as much as we enact and embody its evanescent qualities.” That these interactions become particularly evident in social, political and religious events, such as rituals, ceremonies or competitions, but also in art practices such as theatre, opera, concerts and film, allows them to be empirically explored, analyzed and contextualized historically alongside each other.

This section explicitly aims to integrate doctoral students at the University of Vienna’s Faculty of Philology and Cultural Studies, who are not funded through assistant or project positions. We will develop this section’s events and work formats over the coming months, with the following three points serving as guidelines for their design:

- Activities are based on initiatives by doctoral students.

- Activities are meant to promote the quality of the doctoral theses.

- Activities are designed to enhance the international visibility of researchers and their doctoral projects.