This interdisciplinary and international conference aims to bring together sociologists and literary scholars to ask how social mobility is culturally constructed and contested in our time and to reflect on the prospects of an emerging ‘autosociobiography’.
What are the models and methods, forms and genres by which social mobility is represented in literature, art and culture at the moment? What do these different models and forms make visible and invisible respectively? And to what extent do narrative forms – that translate the social phenomenon of social advancement into everyday life narratives or literary works – play an important role in the construction of our concepts of social mobility? Why do narratives on social mobility seem to resonate across different nations?
These critical questions will be discussed within neighbouring disciplines on narratives in literature, film, visual arts as well as non-artistic fields such as politics, academia or journalism.
The conference is hosted by the Chair of Modern German Literature at LMU and the London School of Economics and Political Science.