24th (evening) – 26th September 2025
This conference takes a look at the structures behind scandals in diverse Anglophone and/or German-speaking contexts of the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, in order to explore their function as catalysts of change. Rather than merely describing individual scandals or reacting to their controversies, we aim to investigate their underlying structures and broader impact.
Key questions include:
What happens to a scandal when the moral system within which it first occurred changes?What happens when the respective legal system lags behind a society’s moral code that has already changed?What happens when, in a social and cultural environment feeding on scandal, we stop caring altogether?What roles can and do the media play in informing and/or producing and/or manipulating the community that is necessary to create a scandal?
By adopting a transdisciplinary perspective – spanning literary, (pop)cultural, social, political and economic contexts – we seek to uncover the function of scandals in prompting transformation. Importantly, we also interrogate the assumption that scandals drive change “for the better”, questioning the perspectives and biases that shape such judgments.
Keynote speaker: Sharon Marcus (Columbia University)
Main venue:
Department of English and American Studies
University of Vienna, Campus AAKH, Hof 8.3
Spitalgasse 2, 1090 Wien
Organisers:
Dr. Sandra Mayer (ÖAW), Prof. Dr. Barbara Straumann (University of Zurich) and Prof. Dr. Sylvia Mieszkowski (University of Vienna).
Conference fee: € 65 / € 35 for PhD students (academic programme free for all Uni Wien students upon prior registration by e-mail)
Registration: Please download the registration form from the Conference homepage and send it by e-mail to ulrike.zillinger@univie.ac.at
More information:
anglistik.univie.ac.at/scandal/
