italian-studies: Scholarly discussions in any field of Italian studies
Whilst the primary constituency for this conference will be
French/Francophone studies and Visual Culture, the appeal to researchers in
'related literatures' (and comparative studies)is very real, hence this
posting on the Italian Studies discussion board.
Susan Harrow
Centre for the Study of Visual and Literary Cultures
University of Bristol
Sublimely Visual: The Art of the Text
5-7 September 2008
In The Mottled Screen (1997) Mieke Bal complemented her rhetorical reading
of painting (Reading 'Rembrandt', 1991) with a visual reading of verbal
matter (Proust's A la recherche). Bal's adventurous study of the visual
properties and processes of the literary text urges us to move beyond the
traditional ut pictura poesis approach in order to develop a properly
generative reading of the visuality of writing.
The aim of this conference is to take forward new approaches in visual
reading. Among the questions to be addressed are: how does writing receive
or resist the textures and figures of visual media? How do writers write
colour and light? How are visual analogies translated, transfigured or
anticipated by the writer and by readers? Which new directions in critical
thought (in literature studies, art history, film studies, and theory) can
enhance our understanding of the interrelations between visual art and
writing? How does the art essay resist its aesthetic object, and become a
subject in and for itself? How do literary texts enrich - or obstruct -
our reading of art, and vice versa?
In broader terms, this conference will reflect on reciprocities, actual and
speculative, between visual culture and French, Francophone and related
literatures of the broad modern period. Our interpretation of 'visual
culture' is capacious, and will include art and art theory, film,
sculpture, photography, photojournalism, installation and performance art,
documentary, the art book, and the specific engagement of writers with art
and aesthetics.
Keywords: visual language, ekphrasis, colour, plasticity, framing,
perspective, light and line, landscape, portrait, typography, concrete
poetry, the translation of perception, figuration, viewing position,
visualising object and surface, painterly description, scale, detail, mise
en abyme, eye and I, gendered viewing, brouillage, abstraction, sequence
and simultaneity, new approaches to text/image studies
Proposals (circa 300 words; deadline 15 February 2008) should be sent,
preferably by e-mail attachment, to
Professor Susan Harrow
Department of French
University of Bristol
19 Woodland Road
Bristol BS8 1TE
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The venue for the conference is the Burwalls Conference Centre in Leigh
Woods, a stunning setting overlooking the Clifton Suspension Bridge.
Registration details will be circulated in Spring 2008.
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