International Spring Symposium 2013 | Akademie meets khm

Public Lecture | International Spring Symposium 2013

The Persistence of Textual Analysis
Richard Dyer
Professor of Film Studies, King's College London

25 April 2013, 6 p.m.
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, Mehrzwecksaal,
Atelierhaus, Lehargasse 6-8, 1060 Wien

Textual analysis has been widely critiqued as a method, with approaches from theory, contextualisation, production and reception studies challenging its validity. Yet the practice of it persists. What forms does the critique take and how strong are their cases? Why does textual analysis persist? Should it? In what form? These questions will be addressed, taking examples from film (specifically Rocco e i suoi fratelli 1960 and Trouble Man 1972), although the issue of textual analysis runs across all the arts and humanities and indeed across all human knowledge.

Richard Dyer

Educated at St. Andrews University (MA) in French with German, English and Philosophy. English at the University of Birmingham (PhD) in the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. At the moment Professor of Film Studies at King's College London. Research interests: entertainment and representation and the relations between them as well as music and film (including melodrama), Italian cinema (especially in its popular forms) and gay / lesbian / queer cultures. Numerous visiting professorships, lectures and publications.