The summer school takes at its starting point the premise that objects are seldom mere objects – inert, mute or purely utilitarian. Rooted within human and social contexts, they animate the worlds of societies, past and present, and transmit a gamut of meanings.

When on the move, they are subject to appropriation, display and reuse, causing their meanings to undergo radical changes. Not infrequently objects become the site of contesting interpretations, conflicts or productive dissonances born out of the space they occupy at the intersection of cultures.

The study of manifold transactions centred on things has attracted practitioners of a range of disciplines – from economic to religious and art history, branching out into material culture, museum studies, anthropology and psychoanalysis. Eminent representatives of many of these areas will lecture and conduct seminar sessions during the summer school.

A central concern of the themes to be discussed is the transcultural mobility of objects with a view to understanding the entanglement of local and global power structures and the working of a complex economy of relationships across national and cultural boundaries.

The Summer School is addressed to an international and multidisciplinary constituency of graduate students. It will be organised around lectures and seminars with readings, a museum visit, excursions and a final round table.

For a detailed programme, application procedures and organisational matters see:

http://www.asia-europe.uni-heidelberg.de/Plone/summer-school-2009

Coordinator: Prof. Dr. Monica Juneja, Karl Jaspers Centre for Advanced Transcultural Studies, University of Heidelberg.