A blog focussing on the "situatedness" of cultural and academic literacy.

This weblog is the convergence of two blogs I have been working on in the past.
As a member of constant I started the blog (the) museum and (new) media on which I wanted to research what is happening in museums today ("after the party is over") in relation to new media. How are artists thinking about the possible functions for a museum not only in the exhibition but also in the production of their work? How do curators see their work in a museum in relation to the new potentialities created by new media. How do cultural critics see the function of the museum in contemporary society?
As a research assistant from Ghent University I also started a blog about my Phd-research on cultural and academic literacy. This blog served as a space to collect quotes, to present ideas, to (re)formulate a hypothesis and to publish draft versions.

These two blogs are now merged into SITUATED, a blog on which I want to focus on the "situatedness" of cultural and academic literacy. In the Department of Education at Ghent University the team I work in (under supervision of Ronald Soetaert) has been researching literacy practices for several years now. Besides many projects on arts education, digitization and the relationship between culture and education in general, there has been research on the role of literature in a post-modern society and education (André Mottart). Another research focused on the representation of literacy in popular Hollywood narratives (Ive Verdoodt).

My own research focuses on academic and cultural literacy. I want to look at the literacy practices that take place when someone enters a specific (discourse) community. What are the codes that count in a particular setting and what is the reason why neophytes often feel clueless about these codes. In first instance I will look at how this happens in academia with students from several backgrounds. But I also want to broaden this research up to other "(sub)cultural settings".

Why the fusion of these two blogs? On the one hand there are of course some practical reasons. But along the way I started to notice that posts that were useful for the one blog also could serve for the other. Because thinking about the position of new media today in relation to the museum deals very much with the situatedness of a form of literacy (new media & art) in a specific institutionalised discourse community (the museum). So besides the general and specific focus of my phd research this blog will also keep paying attention to (the) museum and (new) media.

Kris Rutten