Reading, Seeing, Hearing: Literary Encounters with Medial Others

21 and 22 September 2023

Gabriele Rippl

Dr. Sofie Behluli, UNIBE

Mme Sabine von Rütte, UNIBE

M. Jonathan Sarfin, UNIBE

Mme Malaika Sutter, UNIBE

Prof. Prof. Gabriele Rippl, UNIBE

Prof. Allan Hepburn, McGill University, CA

Prof. Julia Straub, UNIFR

The use of music, visual art and other media in literature has a long tradition and is often approached with the concept of intermediality which entails “a broad variety of exchanges and border crossings between media” (Rippl 2020: 210). Such interactions between different media and their ‘meaning-making’ processes open up “a space of semiotic and material in-between-ness” which allows readers to perceive “the world differently” (Neumann 2015: 513).This workshop aims to examine medial encounters in literature from the medieval ages to the present and to discuss questions such as what are the functions of different media and their border-crossings, how are these medial boundaries changing today and how are we making sense of what we see, hear, and read? Prof. Joan Saab, who is a Professor of Art History and Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, brings in an art historical perspective, Prof. Allan Hepburn, who is a Professor of Twentieth-Century Literature at McGill University, is adding a literary approach dealing with artworks in literature, and Prof. Julia Straub, who is a Professor of Modern English Literature at the University of Fribourg, is an expert on intermedial theory and is currently working on digital media in literature. Together with these experts and Swiss doctoral students working in literary studies, we plan to investigate intermedial encounters and medial meaning-making processes. By looking at different media (text, film, photography, digital media, music and others), we hope to foster interdisciplinary exchange and strengthen our intermedial methodologies. To avoid the usual 20’ presentations that doctoral students have to deliver at most conferences and workshops, we will adopt a problem-oriented approach. In the workshop sessions, participants will discuss their PhD projects based on pre-circulated material (5 pages max., e.g. thesis excerpt, article draft, primary material, etc.), focusing on medial others in literature (music, film, visual art, etc.).The goal of these sessions is to brainstorm together and explore various theoretical and methodological approaches to intermediality amongst PhD students and with the expert help of the workshop speakers.

UNIBE

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