Prof. Dr. Jaqueline BERNDT

Since 1991, when I first became an EAJS member, my engagement as presenter and convenor has been mainly in the Visual Arts section. Initially dedicated to the discipline of Art History, this section has come to embrace visual culture in the broader sense, including other than strictly visual art forms and also critical issues of cross-sectional relevance, for example, intersectionality (as the interconnected nature of social categorizations such as race, class, gender, age, and disability), aesthetic materiality, interpersonal networks, and institutional platforms. During my first period as council member I hoped to effectuate change in the EAJS’s traditional sectioning in order to facilitate research papers that tend to fall through the established disciplinary cracks (as manifesting, for example, in the way convenors are appointed and play the role of gatekeepers). But such change necessitates respective decisions at the General Assembly, as I have learned. During my next tenure, I intend to prepare a motion for the next Assembly in 2021, based on input by colleagues who, like me, find the sectional boundaries between Visual and Performing Arts, sociological/anthropological Media Studies and aesthetically accentuated Media Studies (including Film and Moving Image Studies), or Philosophy/History of Thought and more recent critical theory (including, for example, Posthumanism) at least in part problematic with regard to contemporary research.