The writing desk is a favorite when writing about something new demands an example that points away from the text and adds an illustrative sample case. Its performative mode is representational: by making the desk visible, the boundaries of knowledge and writing come into view. Claiming that philology must start from the material practices at the worksite, this project is interested in literary table scenes from the 18^th to the 21^st centuries. They demonstrate how (writing) desks become part of a powerful dispositive for integrating novel ideas that do not easily fit into the already known. Writing of and about furniture exemplifies empirical ways of knowing, figurative cognition, and changing positions and functions of authorship. It combines symposium genres with conversation styles that allow for polyphony and surprising reasoning. Fundamentally, the project shows how the desk as an everyday object turns into a focal point for theoretical reflections about constructing meaning.

-> For the current Fellow year

-> Find Fellows from previous years