Deadline (EXTENDED): March 31, 2021

Literary photobooks are frequently described as paradigmatic cases of intermediality. Authors have defined intermediality as “intertextuality that transgresses media borders” and “intermodal relations in media”. In literary photobooks, at least two systems are densely related – the verbal system and photography. The word seems to be linked to the photographic image through a bidirectional interaction, involving mutually modulatory influences connecting word and photographic image. They create a coupled system that can be described as a new system, or a new genre. Designed and produced since the end of the 19th century, this kind of multimodal experiment (or literary intermedia genre), has attracted writers, photographers and designers, from several literary and artistic domains. In the last decades this phenomenon has become more and more popular, as witnessed by anthologies and book series in many publishers’ catalogues. The technological development of editing processes and digital printing, with smaller and cheaper print houses, the emergence of independent publishers using new distribution channels, including online networks, contributed to the rise and consolidation of the photobook as a significant contemporary genre. The purpose of this special issue is to bring together experts from different fields of research (literary history and criticism, photography, semiotics, media studies, intermedia and multimodality studies), interested in the photobook as a specific literary genre.

Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Literary photobook: history;
• Analysis of text-photo relations;
• Forms of collaboration between writers and photographers;
• Photobook of literature and intermedia arts;
• Photopoetry: a literary genre?;
• Photobook and intermediality;
• Photobook and multimodality;
• Literary photobook: theories, methods, and models.

DEADLINE: Article submissions will be due on March 31, 2021, with notifications of acceptance by June 1, 2021. Issue editors: Ana Luiza Fernandes (PUC-Rio, Brazil), Karl Erik Schollhammer (PUC-Rio, Brazil) e João Queiroz (UFJF, Brazil).

MATLIT: Materialities of Literature is an open access, peer-reviewed, online journal published by Coimbra University Press and the Centre for Portuguese Literature at the University of Coimbra (Portugal). The journal addresses the material and technological mediations of literary practices, with a particular focus on printness, digitality, aurality, and intermediality. The research fields covered by the journal extend from literary studies to comparative media studies and to digital humanities. MATLIT uses the following working languages: Portuguese, English, and Spanish. There are no article processing charges. Adopting an interdisciplinary and transmedia perspective, the journal is organized into thematic issues. Each issue has its own Call for Papers.

Authors must register and upload their files through the journal platform here: https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/matlit/user/register

Information about submission guidelines: https://impactum-journals.uc.pt/matlit/about/submissions