Comic Literacies – Cultural Techniques of Comedy/the Comic

• Applicant: Dr. Roxanne Phillips
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 573304787

The projected network offers an interdisciplinary and much-needed systematic analysis of the correlations between cultural techniques that feed the perception of the comic and the comic itself as a multifaceted cultural technique that significantly shapes culture(s). The goal is to use the concept of cultural techniques to differentiate the comic both historically and praxeologically, thus gaining analytical access to its implicit knowledge. This knowledge is part of ‘comic literacies’ – culturally specific knowledge formations that must be tapped into both to produce and to recognize artistic representations or everyday situations as comic events. Methodologically, the network that is rooted in cultural studies integrates praxeological and performative approaches of comedy research, media studies perspectives on cultural techniques, and affect studies. Artefacts are contextualized to establish associated social, economic, political, ethical, media, and aesthetic procedures and to ascertain the strategic deployments and gaps as well as the origins, historical shifts, and mechanisms of comic phenomena and practices. Working toward this purpose, the term ‘cultural technique’ is sharpened systematically in three annual topics: The first field examines how concrete cultural techniques make ‘materialities’ seem funny; in doing so, it addresses the research gap related to implicit cultural knowledge or 'tacit knowledge'. The second theme examines cultural techniques of 'arrangement' as spatial and temporal operations that generate the comic on micro and macro levels, recasting comedy studies questions relating to power and politics through the lens of cultural techniques. The third topic turns to 'affects' that are operationalized by the comic. Here we ask how cultural techniques and specific affective economies work together in their attempts to organize emotional landscapes. To effectively position cultural technique approaches to the comic within (inter)national academic communities, it is essential to further develop interdisciplinary terminology. The network achieves this by bringing together experts from cultural studies, theater and literary studies (German, English, Romance philology, and comparative literature), from sociology, gender and performance studies as well as distinguished guests. By incorporating insights from different academic fields, along with a wide array of historically varied artefacts and configurations, the network’s analyses deepen our understanding of both the diversity and the impact of the comic.

• DFG Programme: Scientific Networks