Bringing together research on race, gender, poetics, aesthetics
and other aspects of history, language, literature, art and
culture, this strength encompasses research that looks critically
at the world around us.
When established in 2005, the Cultures and Texts Strategic
Strength emphasized three key areas of research at UB:
- The Americas within the context of the Atlantic World
- Language, Text, and Interpretation (with particular emphasis on
Aesthetics and Theory; Race and Gender; and Sexuality and
Identity)
- Transnational and Diasporic Studies (including colonialism,
postcolonialism, and emigration/immigration)
While continuing to affirm these three core areas as important
to the mission of Cultures and Texts, the ensuing years have
brought significant changes often as a result of the very success
of Cultures and Texts initiatives. Thus, Cultures and Texts faculty
hires, the changing ecology of intellectual and interdisciplinary
activities fostered by such recent initiatives as the Humanities
Institute together with numerous research workshops in the
humanities, and the impact of recent programmatic hires have
together significantly altered the configuration of
interdisciplinary strengths at UB during the last seven years. Not
surprisingly, the result is a transformed landscape of existing and
emergent strengths and areas of new interest in the humanities.
Such existing, emergent, or aspirational strengths and interests
include, for example: Asian studies; early modern studies;
environmental studies and ecocriticism; digital humanities and
knowledge-media from the book to cyberspace; disability studies and
the history of the body; European studies; science studies, the
humanities, and the arts.
In short, this strength encompasses research that looks
critically at the world around us through building networks of
researchers that weave together the perspectives and methods of
multiple disciplines.
Affiliated researchers come from a wide variety of disciplines,
including anthropology, classics, history, literature, aesthetics,
philosophy, language and linguistics, media and visual studies and
represent several initiatives. As a strength, we engage faculty
conducting research into culture in the Americas, the Atlantic
World, Europe, Africa, and Asia, as well as the routes and roots of
various empires and diasporas.
