Projects
Our approach to decadence is both critical and creative. Decadence is a transnational, transcultural, and translational phenomenon.
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Staging Decadence
Staging Decadence is a platform for exploring and sharing theatre and live art that lends itself to decadence as an embodied and enacted practice. It was made possible thanks to a two-year grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and is now an ongoing initiative for fostering new collaborations, publications and events.
Global Decadence
The Global Decadence Lab (GDL) is a ground-breaking space within the Decadence Research Centre (DRC) at Goldsmiths. Formed in 2023, the GDL aims to support and promote research and teaching about decadence that is not restricted to a single place, culture, or historical time period.
Decadence, Magic, and Occult Network (DMON)
DMON investigates intersections between decadent culture, esotericism, and occult traditions from antiquity to the present. Bringing together an international community of scholars and practitioners, it fosters interdisciplinary research and dialogue across literature, performance, philosophy, and the visual arts through events, workshops, and collaborative projects.
Decadent Bodies
The DRC’s ongoing research into the Decadent Body examines how corporeality functions as both a site of sensorial pleasure and a limit to be transcended through aesthetic or imaginative means. Decadence is ‘of’ the body – it augments its sensorial capabilities and cultivates uncommon tastes – but it also recognises the body as that which threatens to limit more refined and perfectly debauched pursuits of the imagination.
Cinematic Decadence
The DRC’s Decadent Film Club curates compelling, boundary-challenging cinema—from global and queer-inflected works to luscious, unsettling visuals. Each seasonal screening is introduced by a specialist and followed by open discussion. The club invites all who are drawn to decadent aesthetics to expand perspectives through film, dialogue, and shared enquiry.
Decadent Pedagogies
‘Decadent Pedagogies: teaching literary decadence in transcultural contexts’ is a collaborative project amongst colleagues from across the UK and Europe which will address the challenges associated with teaching decadent texts and artistic works.
Volupté, based in the DRC, is an international MLA-indexed online journal of decadence from antiquity to the present. It appears bi-annually and brings together in themed issues creative and critical approaches to the field of decadence studies.
To read our current and back issues, please visit Volupté.