This project investigates the specific modes of appearance of “gender” and “ethnicity” in today’s public sphere and in particular in the visual imagery that circulates there. This includes:
– particular prominent and visible processes of the “re-invention” of gender and ethnic identity, the images coined in the course of them and the struggles these processes are involved in;
– cultural-theoretical and empirical investigations of turning formerly “natural” and “racial” things and phenomena defined by religion into “culture(s)”
– case studies concerning the global image of particular ethnic groups such as the Italians and Italianità.
The project combines discourse-analysis with methods of investigating visual culture. It gives special attention to the processes through which individuals and groups are empowered to respond to these images or not, i.e. some particular reception histories these images have set in motion are tracked.