Dr. Julia Borst (University of Bremen): "How and Why Do Literary Scholars Study Websites? – Insights into a Research Project on Afroeuropean Activism in the Digital Space"

• 03.07.2024 – 03.07.2024
• 16:15 Clock
• SFG • Enrique-Schmidt-Str. 7 • Room 0140

The invitation to the event with the abstract of the lecture and more information about Dr. Julia Borst can be found here.

Recently, more and more people of African descent in Romance-speaking Europe have started to tell their stories online, re-appropriating the narrative of who they are and why they are here. The ERC-funded AFROEUROPECYBERSPACE project investigates how they use the internet to gain visibility and participate in knowledge production. Studying online magazines, blogs and other digital formats, it explores how people of African descent narrate experiences of racialization and of (un)belonging on their own terms. In this talk, I will outline the research design of my project and show how literary and cultural studies can contribute to a debate of digital diaspora as they provide us with a methodological toolbox that allows us to explore the poetic strategies, intertexts and symbols used to imagine a diasporic community online, unravelling the narrative textures that shape emerging Afrodiasporic subjectivities.

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Bio:
Julia Borst is a postdoctoral researcher and second speaker of the Institute for Postcolonial and Transcultural Studies (INPUTS) of U Bremen. She is the principal investigator of the ERC Starting Grant project AFROEUROPECYBERSPACE (101110473) and awardee of the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz prize 2021. PhD in Romance studies / literary studies of U Hamburg.