Keynote Lecture & Discussion | Anders Engberg-Pedersen (Odense) | Operational Aesthetics: On War as an Art Form

The ScienceCampus is delightet to welcome Anders Engberg-Pedersen from the University of Southern Denmark as the keynote speaker for the 2024 LSC Annual Conference, held in collaboration with the Working Group on Military Forces and Violence from the Bundeswehr Centre for Military History and Social Sciences. Prof. Engberg-Pedersen will give a talk titled Operational Aesthetics: On War as an Art Form.

Abstract:

There is a rich literature on the role of technology and media in the history of warfare. Less well known is role of art and aesthetics in the military realm. While much work in the humanities examines individual artworks as post hoc representations of war, an aesthetic perspective on war reveals how media technologies and discourses have co-opted key elements and vocabularies from the realm of art and transformed them into operational tools of war. Based on my recently translated book Martialische Ästhetik: Wie Krieg zu einer Kunstform wurde, I will examine some historical and contemporary examples of the curious imbrication of warfare and aesthetics and address both the possibilities and the pitfalls of framing war as an art form.

Bio:

Anders Engberg-Pedersen is Professor of Comparative Literature in the Department for the Study of Culture at the University of Southern Denmark and an affiliate of the Center for War Studies at SDU where he directs the war and culture research group. Prof. Engberg-Pedersen holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Harvard University and in Neuere Deutsche Literatur from Humboldt University of Berlin (2012). His main research areas are the cultural dimensions of warfare from the 17th century to the present, including the fields of literature (German, French, Russian, Scandinavian), aesthetics, the history of knowledge, and technology and media. His books on war and knowledge, war and aesthetics, and war and literary studies have been published by Harvard University Press, Stanford University Press, and Cambridge University Press. He is also the editor of the book series Prisms: Humanities and War with MIT Press.