Prof. Dr. Oliver Scheiding

What is my research about?

I explore how magazines communicate human differentiation through their aesthetic design and material corpus and how the societal traffic in differences may be analyzed with and through magazines. I want to know how people are categorized with magazines.

Why human differentiation?

Below race, gender, age, and ability, there are more granular, internal differentiations. Magazines offer specific medial genres of comparison that allow for operations of sorting and orientation. They function as sites for imaginations and display that categorize attitudes, people, and things. Thus, magazines render visible the role of different styles and aesthetics of categorization within the gears of human differentiation.

My role in the CRC

In the Collaborative Research Center 1482, I am a member of the theoretical working units Categorisation and Indexing, and Combining and Ambiguity.

Foto: Stephanie Füssenich