Call for Papers
8th biennial conference of the International Society for Intermedial Studies (ISIS):
"The Politics of Intermedial Connectivity"
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)
Submission deadline: 15 December 2025. See details below.
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 the compulsory word template 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 the compulsory word template 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.