After years of financial crisis and politics of austerity, as well as a pandemic that brought ordinary life to a halt, culture today is laden with excess. This excess can take many different shapes and foster diverse readings, some of them positive, focusing on excess as an opportunity, while others reflect on its pernicious effects.

On the one hand, excess can be viewed both as a result from and a driver to a better life. Economic stability – i.e. having more than enough money – can be equated with peace, happiness, education, health, and healthier human relationships. It helps turn plans and dreams into reality, while making worrying about day-to-day circumstances futile. Excess can also lead to a wider range of choices and possibilities: from more career options to broader access to goods and services. It is also worth mentioning the recent technological advances that have made resources and knowledge more readily available. As a result, many processes and decisions, powered by digital transformation and ubiquitous connectivity, have become much easier and quicker, as well as more collaborative, open, and democratic.

On the other hand, excess is also a “problem” (Abbott 2014) and is at the core of some of the most important and urgent contemporary issues: overpopulation, the overexploitation of natural resources, overconsumption, information overflow and information overload, etc. All these phenomena have in common the prefix “over-”, which indicates superfluity. As explained by J.R. Slosar, “we take in more than we need, or engage in behavior without thinking it through” (2009, xviii). Everything becomes overwhelming or “too much”– in volume, quantity, and reach – but also more extreme: more wealth is counterbalanced by more poverty; more accounts of eating disorders are accompanied by bigger obesity rates; more movements and calls for peace and solidarity are offset by more and bigger wars fueled by more and deadlier weapons; more necessary and useful products encourage the creation and commercialization of redundant and wasteful objects and systems.

Things in excess, many of which are initially conceived to improve people’s lives and generate more free time, end up, conversely, greatly reducing time and attention. Mobile devices are a great example. Constant access to the internet and social media, for instance, may trigger a sense of temporal dissociation and addictive behaviors that cause anxiety and social detachment. Moreover, the copious amount of content to post, watch, and comment on functions as a source of distraction and, simultaneously, shortens the user’s attention span to make everything more manageable.

The fear of missing out pushes people to spend more time in touch, “tethered to our ‘always-on/always-on-us’ communication devices and the people and things we reach through them” (Turkle 2023, 122). Being pressured to work longer and faster is the other side of the coin to always being “on”. Recent discussions within academia are challenging this “culture of speed” and stressing the importance of taking control back and slowing down (Berg and Seeber 2016).

In the fast pace of our contemporary times, things are usually short-lived. They are deemed unwanted and discarded more rapidly. Falling victim to the alluring idea of shiny and new, once valuable items are quickly turned into waste. A Leavisian interpretation of the mass production and consumption of things can propel us to think about things produced in excessive quantities as lacking in quality. In this case, the original and unique are deeply compromised by repeatability, which replaces the rare with the ordinary, the expensive with the cheap, the durable with the flimsy, the tasteful with the gaudy and kitsch – the substitute almost always painted in a bad light.

The repeatability, or the proliferation of things, generated by excess is also evident in the multiple and varied events and activities that demand our attention and participation. A proven formula – be it a show, a genre, a festival concept, among others – is copied ad nauseum. The novelty dissipates and excess becomes constricting: instead of variability, it promotes alikeness. We see the same things over and over again and what stands out in the desert of similitude is, usually, what offers something “extra” or exceeds the norm(al).

The XV Lisbon Summer School for the Study of Culture is dedicated to the study of the notion of excess in contemporary culture. Papers are welcome on the following topics, amongst others:

• Culture and excess 
• Excess across the ages
• The aesthetics of excess
• Representations of excess
• The rhetoric of excess in literature, arts and politics
• Excessive styles and fashion
• Kitsch
• Discourses of spectacle and excess
• Minimalism and simplicity
• Abundance and/or scarcity
• Usefulness and/or redundancy
• Excess of meanings and interpretations
• Overabundance of communication and translation
• Translatability and excess
• Saturated readings and (re)writings
• Social and cultural overreaction
• Causes and symptoms of excessive behavior
• Decadence and self-indulgence
• Immediacy and impulsivity
• The culture of waste
• Loss in a culture of excess
• Inequality in times of excess
• Theory in times of excess
• Mental health and excess
• Alienation, fascination, and other responses to excess

We encourage proposals coming from the fields of culture studies, film and the visual arts, literary and translation studies, history, anthropology, media, and psychology, among others.

Paper proposals

Proposals should be sent to lxsummerschool@gmail.com no later than February 9, 2025, and include paper title, abstract in English (max. 200 words), name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation, and a brief bio (max. 100 words) mentioning ongoing research.

Applicants will be informed of the results of their submissions by February 28, 2025.

Full papers submission

Presenters are required to send in full papers no later than April 30, 2025.

The papers will then be circulated amongst the participants. In the slot allotted to each participant (30’), only 10’ may be used for a brief summary of the research piece. The Summer School is a place for networked exchange of ideas, and organizers wish to have as much time as possible for a structured discussion between participants. Therefore, in each slot, 10’ will be used for presentation, and 20’ for discussion.

Registration fees

Participants with paper [for the entire week - includes lectures, master classes, doctoral sessions, lunches and closing meal]

Early bird [March 1-31] – 350€

Regular [April 1-June 1] – 450€

Participants without paper [per day - closing meal not included]

Early bird [March 1-31] – 60€

Regular [April 1-June 1] – 80€

Fee waivers

For The Lisbon Consortium students and CECC researchers, there is no registration fee.

For other UCP students, students from institutions affiliated with the European Summer School in Cultural Studies (ESSCS), members of the European PhD-Net in Literary and Cultural Studies, and members of the Critical Theory Network the registration fee is 120€ [early bird – March 1-30]; 200€ [regular – April 1-June1].

Organizing Committee

• Isabel Capeloa Gil
• Peter Hanenberg
• Alexandra Lopes
• Adriana Martins
• Diana Gonçalves
• Paulo de Campos Pinto
• Rita Faria
• Annimari Juvonen

Assessment Committee

• Ana Margarida Abrantes
• Rita Bueno Maia
• Paulo de Campos Pinto
• Sara Eckerson
• Rita Faria
• Diana Gonçalves
• Peter Hanenberg
• Annimari Juvonen
• Luísa Leal de Faria
• Verena Lindemann Lino
• Alexandra Lopes
• Adriana Martins
• Joana Moura
• Sofia Pinto
• Luísa Santos