8th biennial conference of the International Society for Intermedial Studies: The Politics of Intermedial Connectivity cover image

8th biennial conference of the International Society for Intermedial Studies (ISIS)

The Politics of Intermedial Connectivity

Centre for Literary and Intermedial Crossings (CLIC)

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussels, Belgium

27-29 May 2026

 

Keynote speakers:

Mieke Bal (Universiteit van Amsterdam, NL)

Patrick Jagoda (University of Chicago, US)

Birgit Neumann (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, DE)

The 8th biennial conference of the International Society for Intermedial Studies seeks to advance critical discussions on politically engaged uses of intermediality, or on their political interpretation. The conference invites scholars to bring intermedial studies into dialogue with a broad range of disciplines, particularly those engaging with questions of power and identity, by exploring the politics of intermedial connectivity based on a broad understanding of media as technical and/or material communicative forms.

The conference starts out from the observation that intermediality enables media to move and connect across different places, cultures, and/or historical periods. Partaking of ‘the power of the in-between’, intermediality designates a transitory space in which unified and seemingly stable forms of signification are subjected to the transformative force of semiotic and material difference. This differential connectivity brings the dynamic role of media in perpetuating cultural knowledge, (trans-)cultural influences, and organizing power relations to the fore. Indeed, media produce and convey meanings and perceived values, the significance of which evolves as their carriers circulate, interact, and are (re)appropriated or reconfigured. In a world increasingly shaped by migration, translocation, and various other forms of mobility, intermedial constellations therefore often assume socio-political relevance. Time and again, they are mobilized to enact, and (critically) reflect on, processes of translation, contact, and cross-cultural exchange. Studying intermedial works and practices through a culturalist lens attends us to notions of hierarchy, superiority, and legitimacy in the field of cultural representation and draws attention to how the physical, perceptual and cognitive aspects charge their production, reception, and interaction with political meaning.

The conference invites presentations that connect intermedial studies with theoretical frameworks such as postcolonial, feminist, masculinity, queer, critical race, migration, dis/ability, poverty, intersectional, and interspecies studies (or still others). Scholars may explore intermedial works and practices across media, periods, and geographical and linguistic areas.

Topics for contributions include, but are not limited to: 

  • Intermedial practices that emphasize non-hegemonic positionalities and/or engage with the politics of gender, sexuality, race, ethnicity, class, ability, species etc.
  • Intermediality as a tool for the socio-political mediation of contemporary (planetary) crises related to migration, environmental degradation, and/or inter-species encounters
  • Intermedial politics of the in-between
  • The potential of intermediality to interrogate cultural legacies and boundaries
  • Intermediality’s contribution to questioning stable and bounded notions of identity and culture by emphasizing processes of connection and entanglement instead
  • The ethics of intermedial connectivity in asymmetrical transcultural encounters and uneven global mediascapes
  • Intermediality as a decolonial practice
  • Approaches to intermedial connectivity from the angle of transnationalism
  • Intermediality and/in the (fragmented and polarized) digital public sphere
  • Methodological interventions that seek to ‘provincialize’ established theoretical frameworks and/or challenge Eurocentric or globalized assumptions about media interaction and exchange

We plan this conference as an in-person event; therefore we encourage you to come and join us in the debates. Nevertheless, in case you cannot come, we will accept a limited number of online presentations.

We welcome proposals for individual papers, panels, and workshops or practice-based presentations. All three formats are open to artistic contributions and practitioner perspectives.

Individual papers

Individual papers will be allocated a time slot for 20 minutes, plus 10 minutes for discussion. When submitting your proposal, please make sure to use a Word/PDF document for abstracts (250 words), 3–5 keywords and biographical note (100 words).

Panels

In order to ensure the coherence of the panels, we encourage the participants to submit proposals for pre-constituted sessions composed of, e.g., three 20-minute papers. When submitting your proposal, please make sure to use a Word/PDF document for abstracts (250 words), 3–5 keywords and biographical note (100 words), and also include a short presentation (200 words) of the panel as a whole.

Workshops and practice-based presentations

We welcome proposals for workshops and other session formats. In general, workshops will promote active participation while exploring new ideas. The duration can be up to 2 hours. If you would like to propose a workshop or another session format, please contact the organizers by email at imbxl@vub.be.

Submission and deadlines

Please submit your proposal here (by clicking the 'register' button in the next window).

Deadline for submissions is December 15, 2025.

Notifications of acceptance will be sent out at the latest by January 15, 2026.

Questions?

If you have any questions, please get in touch with the conference organizers: Janine Hauthal (VUB), Marcela Scibiorska (ULB-FNRS/VUB), Gry Ulstein (VUB) via imbxl@vub.be.

References and Further Reading:

Arfara, Katia, Aneta Mancewicz, and Ralf Remshardt, eds. Intermedial Performance and Politics in the Public Sphere. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

Audet, René and Corentin Lahouste. “Arts littéraires et reterritorialisations textuelles.” Special issue of Etudes littéraires, vol. 53, no. 3, 2024.

Baer, Hester. “Remediations of Cinefeminism in Contemporary German Film.” Transnational German Film at the End of Neoliberalism: Radical Aesthetics, Radical Politics, edited by Claudia Breger and Olivia Landry. Boydell & Brewer, 2024. 142-161.

Baetens, Jan. “Hybridized Popular Literature”. Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, vol. 2, no. 3, 2018, 271-288.

Bal, Mieke. “Lost in Space, Lost in the Library.” Essays in Migratory Aesthetics Cultural: Practices Between Migration and Art-Making, edited by Sam Durrant and Catherine Lord. Brill, 2007. 23-36.

---. “Citational Aesthetics: For Intermediality as Interrelation.” The Palgrave Handbook for Intermediality, edited by Jørgen Bruhn, Asun López-Varela Azcárate and Miriam de Paiva Vieira. Springer Nature, 2024. 461-492.

---. “Citational Aesthetics: Media Meeting in Intermediality.” Future Directions in Intermediality and Multimodality: Dialogues Inspired by the Work of Lars Elleström, edited by Signe Kjaer Jensen and Matilda Davidsson. Routledge, 2025. 178-203.

Balestrini, Nassim W. “The Polymedial Aesthetics of Climate Change Drama.” Teaching the Literature of Climate Change, edited by Debra J. Rosenthal. Modern Language Association, 2024. 113-122.

Baroni, Raphaël. “Pour une narratologie transmédiale.” Poétique, vol. 182, no. 3, 2017. 155-175.

Bencke, Ida, and Jørgen Bruhn. Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices. Punctum, 2022.

Bruhn, Jørgen. “Towards an Intermedial Ecocriticism.” Beyond Media Borders, Volume 2: Intermedial Relations among Multimodal Media, edited by Lars Elleström. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. 117-148.

---. “Intermedial Ecocriticism: The Anthropocene Ecological Crisis across Media and the Arts.” Ekphrasis: Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, vol. 24, no. 2 (2020), pp. 5-18.

---. “Towards an Intermedial Theory of Medial Agency: Environing Media.” European Review vol. 31 (2023), pp. 132-147.

---, Matilda Davidsson and Niklas Salmose. “The Ecological Crisis and Intermedial Studies.” The Palgrave Handbook for Intermediality, edited by Jørgen Bruhn, Asun López-Varela Azcárate and Miriam de Paiva Vieira. Springer Nature, 2024. 1033-1059.

---, and Niklas Salmose. Intermedial Ecocriticism: The Climate Crisis Through Art and Media. Lexington Books, 2024.

Caracciolo, Marco. “Remediating Video Games in Contemporary Fiction: Literary Form and      Intermedial Transfer.” Games and Culture vol. 18, no. 5 (2025), pp. 664-683.

Cho, HyeYoung. “Intermedial Feminism: Megalia and Kangnam Station Exit 10.” Trans. Aliju Kim. Mediating Gender in Post-Authoritarian South Korea, edited by Jesook Song and Michelle Cho. U of Michigan P, 2024. 46-65.

Didi-Hubermann, Georges. Gestes critiques. Klincksieck, 2024.

Fuchs, Barbara. “Staged Work: Intermediality and the Labor of Performance in Christiane Jatahy’s Julia and Kid Koala’s Nufonia Must Fall.” Theatre Journal, vol. 71, no 2 (June 2019), pp. 153-169.

Grishakova, Marina and Ryan, Marie-Laure. Intermediality and Storytelling, Berlin, New York: De Gruyter, 2011.

Hart, Heidi, Ola Ståhl and Jørgen Bruhn, editors. Special Issue “Ecological Emergencies Across Media”, Ekphrasis: Images, Cinema, Theory, Media, vol. 33, no. 1 (2025).

Haselstein, Ulla, Berndt Ostendorf and Peter Schneck, editors. Iconographies of Power: The Politics and Poetics of Visual Representation. Winter, 2003.

Hassler-Forest, Dan, and Pascal Nicklas, editors. The Politics of Adaptation: Media Convergence and Ideology. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

Hauthal, Janine. “Inter- and Transmedial Revisions of Europe from and for its Margins in Milo Rau’s Orestes in Mosul.” The Theatre of Milo Rau: Aesthetics – Ethics – Politics, edited by Teresa Kovacs, Tanja Nusser, Nicole Rizzo and Anna-Maria Senuysal. Brill, 2025. 35-56.

He, Chengzhou. “Intermedial Cross-dressing Performance as Cultural Intervention.” European Review, vol. 31 (2023): pp. 118-131.

Heeg, Günther. “Transcultural Gestures: Collective Engagement in Theatre, Practice of Separation and Intermedial Crystallizations.” Collective Creativity: Collaborative Work in the Sciences, Literature and the Arts, edited by Gerhard Fischer and Florian Vassen. Brill, 2011. 345-353.

Hepp, Andreas. “Networks of the Media: Media Cultures, Connectivity, and Globalization.” Global Fragments: (Dis)Orientation in the New World Order, edited by Anke Bartels and Dirk Wiemann. Brill, 2007. 227-240.

Houwen, Janna. “An Empty Table and an Empty Boat: Empathic Encounters with Refugee Experiences in Intermedial Installation Art.” American, British, and Canadian Studies, vol. 27 (2016): pp. 44-73.

Isaacs, Lauren, and Hermann Wittenberg. “Making Black Creativity Visible: Reading the Intermediality of Zakes Mda's Fictions.” English in Africa, vol. 51, no. 2 (2024): pp. 7-27.

Jagoda, Patrick, with Ireashia Bennett and Ashlyn Sparrow. Transmedia Stories: Narrative Methods for Public Health and Social Justice. Stanford UP, 2023.

---, and Ashlyn Sparrow. “Pessimistic Futurism: Black Worlding and Better Games.” Imaginable Worlds: Art, Crises, and Global Futures, edited by Orianna Cacchione, Nandita Jaishankar, and Arushi Vats. U of Chicago P, 2023.

---, Ellen McCammon, Jessica Law, Crystal Tyler, Mason Arrington, and Melissa Gilliam. “Using Digital Games to Promote Equity in Career and Health Education: A Prototype of Caduceus Quest.” Urban Education, vol. 59, no. 5 (2024), pp. 1396-1427.

Jensen, Sarah, and Elicia A. Clements, editors. The Politics of Intermedial Modernism(s) [in preparation].

Johnston, Andrew James, Margitta Rouse and Philipp Hinz, editors. The Medieval Motion Picture: The Politics of Adaptation. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Kérchy, Anna, and Catriona McAra, editors. Special Issue “Feminist Interventions in Intermedial Studies”, European Journal of English Studies, vol. 21, no. 3 (2017).

Leetsch, Jennifer, Frederike Middelhoff and Miriam Wallraven, editors. Configurations of Migration: Knowledges – Imaginaries – Media. De Gruyter, 2023.

Li, Shuangyi. “(Sino)graphs in Franco(n)texts: The Multilingual and the Multimodal in Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts.” Multilingual Literature as World Literature, edited by Jane Hiddleston and Wen-chin Ouyang. Bloomsbury, 2021. 27-50.

---. Travel, Translation and Transmedia Aesthetics: Franco-Chinese Literature and Visual Arts in a Global Age. Palgrave Macmillan, 2021.

Mueller, Juergen E. “Intermedialities, Societies, and Power Histories.” The Palgrave Handbook for Intermediality, edited by Jørgen Bruhn, Asun López-Varela Azcárate and Miriam de Paiva Vieira. Springer Nature, 2024. 97-134.

Neumann, Birgit. “Intermedial Negotiations: Postcolonial Literatures.” Handbook of Intermediality, edited by Gabriele Rippl. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015. 512-529.

---. “Postcolonial Ekphrasis and Counter-Visions in Derek Walcott's Tiepolo's Hound: Contacts, Contests and Translations.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, vol. 64, no. 4 (2016), pp. 447-465.

---, and Gabriele Rippl. Intermedial Aesthetics: Verbal-Visual Configurations in Postcolonial Literatures. London: Routledge, 2020.

---, and Gabriele Rippl. “Intermedial Poetics in Contemporary Anglophone Novels: Re-Negotiating Western Visual Archives.” Journal of Comparative Literature and Aesthetics, vol. 47, no. 2 (2024), pp. 30-42.

Oosterling, Henk, and Ewa Plonowska Ziarek, editors. Intermedialities: Philosophy, Arts, Politics. Lexington, 2011.

Panagia, Davide. Intermedialities: Political Theory and Cinematic Experience. Northwestern UP, 2024.

Pethő, Ágnes. Cinema and Intermediality. The Passion for the In-Between. 2nd enlarged edition, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2020.

---, editor. Caught In-Between. Intermediality in Contemporary Eastern European and Russian Cinema. Edinburgh UP, 2020.

---. “The Photo-filmic and the Post-human: Picturesque Landscapes at the Peripheries of Global Cinema.” Cinematic Intermediality. Theory and Practice, edited by Kim Knowles and Marion Schmid. Edinburgh UP, 2021. 38-52.

Rancière, Jacques. The Politics of Aesthetics [2000]. Trans. Gabriel Rockhill. Continuum, 2004.

Rippl, Gabriele. “Postcolonial Ekphrasis in the Contemporary Anglophone Indian Novel.” Handbook of Intermediality, edited by Gabriele Rippl. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2015. 128-155.

---. “Sustainability, Eco-ekphrasis and the Ethics of Literary Description.” Cultural Sustainability, edited by Torsten Meireis and Gabriele Rippl. Routledge, 2019. 221-232.

---, and Sofie Behluli. “Art – Life – Planet: Ekphrasis today.” The Routledge Companion to Literature and Art, edited by Neil Murphy, W. Michelle Wang and Cheryl Julia Lee. Routledge, 2024. 241-250.

Rooney, Monique. “Queer Objects and Intermedial Timepieces: reading s-town (2017).” Angelaki, vol. 23, no. 1 (2018): pp. 156-173.

Salmose, Niklas. “Three Transmediations of the Anthropocene: An Intermedial Ecocritical

Reading of Facts, Sci-Fi, PopSci and Eco-Horror.” Transmediations: Communication Across Media Borders, edited by Niklas Salmose and Lars Elleström. Routledge, 2019. 254-273.

Schirrmacher, Beate. “The Common Grounds of Music and Violence: Depicting Violence in Literature with Intermedial References to Music.” Ideology in Words and Music: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the Word and Music Association Forum Stockholm, November 8–10, 2012, edited by Beate Schirrmacher, Heidi Hart, Katy Heady and Hannah Hinz. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2014. 141-154.

---, Heidi Hart, Katy Heady and Hannah Hinz, editors. Ideology in Words and Music: Proceedings of the 2nd Conference of the Word and Music Association Forum Stockholm, November 8–10, 2012. Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis, 2014.

---, and Nafiseh Mousavi, editors. Truth Claims across Media. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.

Schröter, Jens. “The Politics of Intermediality,” Acta Univ. Sapientiae, Film and Media Studies, vol. 2 (2010), pp. 107-124.

Selimović, Inela, and Camilla Sutherland, editors. Special Issue “Interrupted Frames: Gender and Intermediality”, Mistral: Journal of Latin American Women’s Intellectual & Cultural History, vol. 3, no. 1 (2023).

Sutton, Emma. Virginia Woolf and Classical Music: Politics, Aesthetics, Form. Edinburgh UP, 2013.

Toffano, Giacomo, and Kevin Smets. “Refugee hybrid fiction: Rhetorical, Generic, and Intermedial Hybridity as strategies of political resistance.” Crossings: Journal of Migration & Culture, vol. 14, no. 2 (2023), p. 177 – 195.

Vellai, Micayla, and Hermann Wittenberg. “Intermedial Reflections on Analogue Photography and Digital Visuality in Moxyland.” Journal of Literary Studies / Tydskrif vir Literatuurwetenskap, vol. 38, no. 3 (2022): https://doi.org/10.25159/1753-5387/12031 [13 pages].