New Centre for ’Modern and Contemporary Studies’ at JMU

The Faculty of Arts and the Humanities at JMU is becoming even more interdisciplinary: The new centre for "Modern and Contemporary Studies" provides new opportunities for collaborative research and teaching. The aim of the new centre is to strengthen cross-faculty collaboration in the humanities and social sciences. It focuses on literature, culture and history from the time around 1770 to the present day. The spokespersons for the new research group are Professor Catrin Gersdorf, Chair of American Studies, and Professor Stephanie Catani, Chair of Modern German Literary History I. Topics range from socio-ecological transformation to artificial intelligence. The new centre will focus on three main areas: Environment, Media and Ideas. The "Environment" area focuses on ecological issues from a humanities, social sciences, and cultural studies perspective. Researchers investigate the relationship between nature and culture as it has developed over time; and they study to what extend literature and art have influenced that relationship.