„Skepticism Films“ now available

At last! Apparently, some books take their time before peeking out into the world, in a Wittgensteinian fashion. This is certainly true for my Skepticism Films. Knowing and Doubting the World in Contemporary Cinema: almost ten years after I drafted my first ideas about the way in which mainstream cinema plays around with ideas of a rather philosophical provenance, the book is finally available in print and in ebook format, published by Bloomsbury. I am very happy about that – and about the wonderful design and haptics of the book. You can find more information about the book here, the link to the publisher’s homepage with additional online material is here.

Cover of "Skepticism Films"

Presentation on Aurality in Picturebooks

Tobias Kurwinkel and I were invited for a talk at the Oldenburg symposium „farb klang reim rhythmus“ (Colour, sound, rhyme, rhythm). In our presentation „Überlegungen zur Auralität im Bilderbuch“ we sketched a way of applying our concept of aurality, originally developed for the analysis of the entanglement of sound and image in children’s film, to the analysis of picturebooks. The symposium, organized by the Forschungsstelle Kinder- und Jugendliteratur (OlFoKi, Research Center for Children’s Literature) of the University of Oldenburg, took place from november 12 to 14, and it assembled many brilliant and talented picturebook scholars as well as musicians, for instance the composer Henrik Albrecht, the conductor-researcher Reinhard Gagel, and the reseacher-publisher Christian A. Bachmann  Thanks to the organizers, Mareile Oetken and Lars Oberhaus, for the kind invitation!