italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
University of Warwick
12-14 March 2009
ENLIGHTENING ENCOUNTERS:
ITALIAN LITERATURE AND PHOTOGRAPHY THROUGH TIME
CALL FOR PAPERS
Since 1839, when the invention of the daguerreotype was made public, literature has
incorporated, resisted, rejected or adapted photography through language and the written
word. On the other hand, photography has, on various occasions, re-constructed, evoked,
emulated or interrogated the written text and the literary world. The relationship between
the two has always been that of an illuminating, reciprocal exchange of voices and
images, words and light.
Over the last few years academics and intellectuals have been demonstrating an
increasing interest in the interaction between literature and photography. However, it is
evident that studies and research on this topic have mostly been carried out in the fields
of German, English, French and American Studies.
Enquiries on the interrelations between the photographic image and writing have often
been neglected or underestimated in Italian Studies so that a series of questions are still
waiting to be fully answered or clarified, some of them being:
- in what ways have photographers been inspired by Italian literature?
- how does photography evoke, engage with, comment on, or develop literary texts?
- which cultural politics of photography have Italian writers been responding to since the
appearance of photography in the nineteenth century?
- how do literary texts of any period respond to a photographic aesthetic?
- how do Italian narrative forms respond to and inform the cultural representations of
memory and time posited by photography?
- how has recent writing engaged with new photographic techniques (e.g. the
digital camera, new modes of image storage and processing)?
This conference aims to explore some of these questions and seeks to provide an
interdisciplinary forum for the discussions of various aspects of the dialogue between
Italian literature and the photographic medium.
Areas to be discussed include:
- Italian literature and photography in the contexts of verismo, modernism, neo-realism
and postmodernism;
- Photographs in prose, poetry, fiction and non-fiction of any period;
- Italian literature in photographs;
- Photographs re-presenting and evoking early literature;
- Photography, life writing, memory and postmemory;
- Photo-texts and ekphrasis;
- Photography and travel writing, migration literature, (post)colonial writing;
- Photography as/and translation;
- Photographs and writing in relation to issues of identity, gender and sexuality;
- Connections between photography, Italian literature, cinema and other arts;
- Collaborations between writers and photographers;
- Italian literary and cultural critics on photography.
We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers in English and in Italian by 30th September
2008.
Enquiries and proposals should be addressed to:
Jennifer Burns ([log in to unmask])
Giorgia Alù ([log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask])
Department of Italian, Studies, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, UK
Tel +44 24 7652 4126
***************************
Dr Giorgia Alù
Cassamarca Lecturer
Department of Italian Studies,
MacCallum Building (A18),
University of Sydney, N.S.W. 2006
AUSTRALIA
Ph. +61 2 93516887
Fax +61 2 93513407
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