AnnualReport2020

HOST LABORATORIES IN
HUMAN AND SOCIAL SCIENCES
INTERACTIONS CULTURELLES ET DISCURSIVES (ICD)
EA 6297 - UNIVERSITÉ DE TOURS
CENTRE D’ÉTUDES SUPÉRIEURES DE LA RENAISSANCE (CESR)
UMR 7323 - UNIVERSITÉ DE TOURS, CNRS
Set up through the initiative of Gaston Berger in 1956 and affiliated at that time with the University
of Poitiers, the CESR became an integral part of the newly established University of Tours in 1970.
Successive agreements in 1983 and 1992 enhanced the institutional links between the CESR and
the CNRS. In 1996 the CESR reaffirmed its commitment to interdisciplinary research into key
themes of European patrimony (for instance, around musicology, art history and the history of the book), in an
accord with the French Ministry of Culture, the CNRS and University of Tours. The CESR celebrated its halfcentennial
in 2006. The CESR is an education and research centre, which welcomes students and researchers
wishing to acquire an initial or additional university education in all domains of the Renaissance. The CESR’s
research programmes are structured according to disciplinary teams (history, history of art, French, neo-Latin
and European literature, philosophy, musicology, history of science and techniques), research fields and team
projects
The interdisciplinary research unit Interactions Culturelles et Discursives (ICD, EA 6297) was born in 2012
with the merger of four groups belonging to the Letters, Languages and Human Sciences sector and
grouping colleagues from two faculties (Letters & Languages, and Arts & Human Sciences). The new entity
allows the collaboration of academics working in different departments such as Anglo-American Studies,
Spanish, Ibero-American and Portuguese Studies, Law and Languages, Ancient and French literatures, Philosophy, etc.
The programme for 2018-2023 is entitled ‘Liberties’ and, in the wake of the previous programme (‘Paradigms of authority’
- 2012-2017), it deals with the description and analysis of forms of liberty, and the times/places where liberty was/is in
crisis, in the various fields of the arts, literature, and social and political life. It is devised around three main research axes:
1) Culture and politics, colonial and postcolonial studies: the politics of cultural and national diversity, subversion of the
norm and creation of the possible, postcolonial modernities and transformations in/of culture;
2) Writing and other discursive practices: liberty and censorship or esthetic constraint, creation and interpretation
(literature, music, theatre, cinema), translations and cultural transfer;
3) Constructed and deconstructed identities, genders: popular and mass cultures, re-reading of «gender discourses»,
representations of the body and environmental humanities.
While never renouncing the specificities of academic research corresponding to the sections inherent to the French
university system, the group encourages transdisciplinary studies. All of the axes are characterized by convergences in the
problematics contemplated and researchers may move freely between them. The members of the group may thus work
along several axes.
CITÉS, TERRITOIRES, ENVIRONNEMENT ET SOCIÉTÉS (CITERES)
UMR 7324 - UNIVERSITÉ DE TOURS, CNRS
POUVOIR, LETTRES, NORMES (POLEN)
EA 4710 - UNIVERSITÉ D’ORLÉANS
Human & Social Sciences 2020
The interdisciplinary research unit (CNRS UMR) CITERES was created in 2004 to strengthen
and structure the research capabilities of the University of Tours on the broad topic of
“Cities, Territories, Environment and Society”, performed by a team of specialists from
sociology, geography, anthropology, history, economics, urban planning, and political sciences. Four research
teams work on archeology and paleontology of the Loire Basin (LAT), on social-political analysis (COST),
on the Arab World and North African Mediterranean (EMAM, and on Environmental and Urban Management
(DATE).The latter hosted the LeStudium fellow (by DATE member Karl M. Wantzen, UNESCO Chair Fleuves et
Patrimoine – River Culture)
POLEN’s areas of research concerns the issues of power and authority in their different forms (political
power, religious authority, social practices, cultural, literary and artistic models, legal frameworks and
judicial norms). It addresses their different modes of expression, representation and diffusion (texts, images
and all forms of symbolic and artistic production). These topics raise a contrario, questions of contestation,
subversion and marginality.
This general project is addressed in particular ways by the different component research groups according to their
particular focus and the research fields of their members.
Teams of POLEN :
• CESFiMA : Centre for Research into the Late Middle Ages : the construction of norms and models by centres of authority
and learning ; the diffusion, contestation and reconstruction of knowledge, norms and models.
• CLARESS : From the Classical Age to the Restoration of the French Monarchy: private and public practices of writing and
reading; the writings of the inner self; authority and the written word; the interaction of the public and the private in written
practices.
• CEPOC : Centre for Contemporary Political Studies: the types and norms of political discourse; the social and cultural
connections between literature and politics; memory and its written expression; non-discursive political writing (images,
rituals, ceremonies).
POLEN is member of Human Sciences Loire Valley’s Home.
Human & Social Sciences 2020
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