Chimeras: Text/Image History, Transformations and Future

(Hybrid Format)

University of Glasgow, UK

Conference Dates: Feb. 2025

Location: University of Glasgow

The proposed PGR-led conference will explore the history, transformations, and future of chimeras in the context of text/image relationships. In 1924, the French poet André Breton published the Surrealist Manifesto, marking the beginning of a movement that significantly influenced the popularity of image/text books. Breton's 'Nadja' (1928) exemplifies this practice. Over the past century, numerous image texts have emerged, ranging from magazines and comics to photo albums and experimental literature. With the development of technologies such as OpenAI's generative image-text transformers like Midjourney and Chat-GPT, we are witnessing significant transformations in the relationship between image and text, and it is crucial to discuss the history and future of image/text interactions at this juncture.

The Stirling Maxwell Centre and the Hunterian archives at the University of Glasgow offer a rich corpus of image-text research resources, including Oriental, European, and British art and book collections. Additionally, there are many research scholars and doctoral students dedicated to this field at the University of Glasgow. Based on these special academic contexts, our conference aims to systematically revisit the history of image-text relations over the centuries and explore new possibilities for their future development. Through this conference, we seek to establish connections between Scotland and international graphic studies, review the history of graphic studies, and explore the future of image-text research. Furthermore, the conference will provide a platform for young researchers to present their work. It also strengthens the links between HEIs and surrounding publicly facing institutions, such as museums and galleries.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Memory writing: Visual/Text in cultural memory narratives and intermediality;
2. Experimental literature that relies on photo/text;
3. Comparative studies between Scottish image/texts and other cultures;
4. Image/text experiments in biography and comics;
5. Visual/Textual research of magazines;
6. Queering the Textual & Trans*ing the Visual: queer and trans embodiments in the arts and literature;
7. The future of Text/Image: discuss the transformations, challenge of Text/Image relationship in OpenAI (Midjourney, Chatgpt) era;
8. Affectual engagements with visual/textual narratives

Format:

We welcome submissions for academic research or creative practices (including films, painting, sculpture, performance, new media, photography, audio) on the theme of visual/textual research across disciplines and periods. 

Please submit abstracts for 15/20 minute presentations. Proposals should include a title, a 250-word abstract, a brief biographical note (max. 100 words), and contact details. Proposals should be submitted to imagetextglasgow@gmail.com no later than Dec. 10th, 2025.

Keynote speakers: Mihaela Precup is Associate Professor in the American Studies Program at the University of Bucharest, Romania. Her main research interests include American graphic narratives, memory, trauma and autobiography studies. Her most recent publication is the monograph The Graphic Lives of Fathers: Memory, Representation, and Fatherhood in Autobiographical Comics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). She has co-edited (with Rebecca Scherr) three special issues of The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics (on War and Conflict and Sexual Violence in Comics).

Find the Call for Papers here: https://t.co/Z9bl6qHCkE