Journal for Cultural Studies

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Lars Koch
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies ; General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages ; Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; European and American Literary and Cultural Studies ; German Literary and Cultural Studies (Modern German Literature) ; Sociological Theory ; Theatre and Media Studies
• Term: from 2018 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 401033522

The Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift (KWZ) is published since 2016 by the Kulturwissenschaftlichen Gesellschaft (KWG) founded in 2015. Thus far, a founding issue was published and a further issue (1/2017) is currently being prepared. The aim of the journal is to promote cultural studies research by publishing high-quality papers in German and English from a broad field and range of cultural studies. Paradigmatic analyses of historical and current phenomena as well as reconstructing and initiating pressing theoretical questions are the subject matter of the journal that hold the promise to advance research in the field of cultural studies. Alongside papers, reviews and conference reports, each issue contains a programmatic guest contribution of a renowned cultural studies researcher concerning specialized present-day controversies and topics. The languages offered for publication are German and English. The papers of the Kulturwissenschaftliche Zeitschrift undergo a double-blind review. The KWZ is published twice a year featuring an online issue (open access) by the De Gruyter publishing house. The KWZ appears as publishing organ of the KWG with the goal to enhance debates concerning cultural studies issues, theoretical approaches and concepts without thematic specifications. In scholarly exchange with international scientific discourses, own traditions of theory shall be critically examined by use of theory introduced internationally. The KWZ understands itself as forum for interdisciplinary communication. It is the aspiration of the journal regarding methodology and content to establish itself as central publication of cultural studies discussions in the German speaking scientific community. The KWZ sets itself the task to meta-reflexively accompany the emergence of trends in discourses and methodology in the field of cultural studies and to tie them to respective existing traditions. Different perspectives of individual disciplines are welcomed within the journal, yet they are incorporated into a multi-perspectival context of discussion. The KWZ critically questions essentialist and universalistic concepts of culture; its underlying concept starts from the premise that culture develops in negotiations—of scripts, convictions, and actions. As an assembly of permanent processes of translation, the academic analysis of culture calls for a transnational and transcultural approach. As the KWZ dedicates itself to this, the re-establishment of the journal contributes to a better understanding of the cultural grammars and technological conditions of actions/practice, orders and dynamics of societal change.

• DFG Programme: Science Communication, Research Data, eResearch (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)
• Co-Investigators: Dr. Nina Kalwa; Professor Dr. Wolf-Andreas Liebert; Professorin Dr. Nicole Maruo-Schröder