Topics in Literary and Cultural Theory: From Minimalism to Maximalism: Scale in Literature, the Arts, & Media

What happens when the sizes and proportions of aesthetic artefacts are changed? Are such quantitative shifts merely superficial in character or do they cause substantial and qualitative alterations of the phenomena concerned. The seminar discusses concrete case studies drawn from a broad spectrum of disciplines in the humanities and provides an opportunity to examine how individual artifacts and their social circulation respond to scaling. Moreover, an attempt is made to compare process of scaling in the major arts and media and thus to establish scaling as a new perspective in the analysis of culture more generally.