Travelling Concepts in the Humanities: A Rough Guide (Green College Lecture Series) Paperback November 2, 2002

by Mieke Bal

"Travelling Concepts in the Humanities is intended as a guidebook for interdisciplinary cultural analysis in the humanities. In this challenging work, Mieke Bal analyses a variety of concepts - such as meaning, metaphor, narrative, and myth - that 'travel' from one discipline to another. To illustrate the possibilities of these concepts, she provides examples drawn from a number of disciplines, including literary criticism, art history, and visual studies. Interdisciplinarity, she argues, must seek its heuristic and methodological basis in concepts rather than in methods." This study will be of interest to scholars in a variety of disciplines, including literary studies, art history, biblical studies, feminist theory, and visual and cultural studies.

Genres: Humanities, Theory, Philosophy, Anthropology

Unknown Binding

First published November 2, 2002

About the author

Mieke Bal is a Dutch literary theorist, cultural and art historian.

Areas of interest range from biblical and classical antiquity to 17th century and contemporary art and modern literature, feminism and migratory culture. Her many publications include A Mieke Bal Reader (2006), Travelling Concepts in the Humanities (2002) and Narratology (4th edition 2017). Her view of interdisciplinary analysis in the Humanities and Social Sciences is expressed in the profile of what she has termed “cultural analysis”, the basis of ASCA. See the video clip on the right side of this page, where I explain the approach.

Mieke is also a video artist, her internationally exhibited documentaries on migration include Separations, State of Suspension, Becoming Vera and the installation Nothing is Missing and are part of the Cinema Suitcase collective. With Michelle Williams Gamaker she made the feature film A Long History of Madness, a theoretical fiction about madness, and related exhibitions (2012). Her following project Madame B: Explorations in Emotional Capitalism, also with Michelle, is exhibited worldwide. She just finished a feature film and 5-screen installation on René Descartes and his infelicitously ending friendship with Queen Kristina of Sweden.

Occasionally she acts as an independent curator. Her co-curated exhibition 2MOVE travelled to four countries. She is currently preparing an exhibition for the Munch museum in Oslo.

Reviews

[Mentai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Revisiting this very useful book. Bal has given us conceptual tools to help communicate across disciplinary boundaries. Adapting for multimodal and multimedia arts practice.

[Sandra · Rating 4 out of 5]

A great book, really a guide for interdisciplinary cultural analysis in the humanities. Bal considers methods to be concepts, and analyses how different concepts (meaning, myth, metaphor, narrative) travel across disciplines such as art history, visual studies, literary criticism, cultural studies, etc.