This year, the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies celebrates its 25th anniversary. Established in 2001, the Collegium was founded to follow the original Institute for Advanced Study model by providing outstanding scholars in the humanities and social sciences with the freedom necessary for cutting-edge, curiosity-driven research. Over the past quarter-century, the Collegium has grown into a vibrant international community known for its collegial and multidisciplinary atmosphere.

In addition to the main celebration, the Collegium organizes various events during the three first weeks of June.

Program

2:15 pm              

Musical Performance

Anniversary Greetings 

Hanne Appelqvist, Director of HCAS

Kari Raivio, Chancellor Emeritus of the University of Helsinki

Hanna Snellman, Vice-Rector of the University of Helsinki, Chair of the HCAS Board

Ann Phoenix, Professor of Psychosocial Studies (University College London), Member of the HCAS Academic Advisory Board

Screening of HCAS Video

Keynote Address

Jane Cowan, Professor Emerita of Anthropology (University of Sussex), Former Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor in Studies on Contemporary Society

Professor Cowan will be introduced by Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology Sarah Green (University of Helsinki).

Musical Performance

4:30 pm               

Reception in the Foyer

7:00 pm               

Dinner at Katajanokan Kasino (Laivastonkatu 1)

Dress Code: Dark suit

What constitutes a text? How do shared assumptions emerge about what texts are and how they function in the world? How are authorship and authority connected to these historically contingent “text ideologies”? This symposium takes the advent of digital technologies as a timely opportunity to challenge the dominant text ideologies of modernity. Bound up with the establishment of literacy as essential to cultural competence, and with the legitimacy structures of post-Enlightenment polities, these dominant text ideologies affected who produced public texts – literary, legal, popular and more – and how. Historically oriented research has wrestled with these dominant ideologies for decades, seeing them as ill-suited to non-modernized milieux; it is only recently, however, that such critiques have become augmented by ideologies and practices associated with digital media. For many researchers today, these changes are still only vaguely sensed and appreciated: the symposium will illuminate and interrogate them through discussions between scholars investigating diverse cultural contexts and historical periods, from oral and scribal cultures through modern “mass” media to contemporary digital technologies. Bringing into dialogue perspectives from different phenomena and disciplines, the symposium aims to forge new theoretical frameworks for texts and textuality, opening paths for future scholarship at a potentially transformative moment in history.

Organized by HCAS Fellows Frog, Paul Frosh, and Katja Kujanpää.