Research projects
International Research Network on
Postcolonial Print Cultures (IRNPPC)
The International Research Network on Postcolonial Print Cultures, funded by the CNRS (2023-2027) with additional funding from the University of Chicago Center in Paris (2023-25) brings together scholars working in the fields of postcolonial studies and literatures, book and art history, print and material cultures, from 8 different institutions : the CNRS, the University of Chicago, Newcastle University, University of the Witwatersrand, NYU and NYU Abu Dhabi, Jadavpur University and the Center for Studies in Social Sciences in Calcutta.
Scholars of the IRNPPC are interested in the production, circulation, and consumption of print as an agent in social, cultural, and political life, and look at the practices, institutions, and networks that have shaped writing, reading and publishing in colonial and postcolonial contexts.
The network aims at developing a comparative and transnational framework to understand how genres, forms and actors long considered ‘footnotes of literary history’ (periodicals and newspapers, tv and radio broadcasts, pamphlets, advertising material etc.) have in fact been instrumental to the development of literary cultures in the Global South, instrumental forces of postcolonial and decolonial struggles, and sites of North/South and South/South transnational exchanges.
Veridicality, Rhetorical Tropes, and
Epistemic Vigilance in On-line Communication:
Semantic and Pragmatic Underpinnings
This project will examine what semantic and pragmatic conditions must be met for an individual to recognize that a claim made online requires investigation and cannot be taken at face-value, as well as what epistemic conditions must be met for individuals making genuine truth claims to anonymous collectives. Using methodologies from linguistics and from the philosophy of language, the team will examine whether or not social media reshapes what users consider “evidence” to be, what specific interactions between evidence and truth arise in a social media environment that do not arise in normal speech, and what kinds of evidence serve to form the basis of judgements of truth value and trustworthiness.
Funded in part by the UChicago-CNRS PhD Joint Program, this project is being led by Anastasia Giannakidou, Frank J. McLoraine Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Chicago, and Alda Mari, Director of Research at Institut Jean Nicod, Paris.