HERMES Summer School (June 12-16, Leuven)

Contemporary Perspectives on Media and Genre Interactions

 

In this Summer School we will explore the influence of the ever-transforming media landscape on literary genres. How do media affect and change literary genres? Which new literary genres emerge under the influence of other media? And what is the influence of transmediality and convergence culture on comparative literary studies?

Another set of questions relates to genre as a classification instrument in both literature and other media. Do accepted terms like drama, comedy… but also autofiction mean the same thing in different media e.g., literature, television or genres? This question can be explored from a diachronic or a synchronic perspective: how do genres change under the influences of developments in media culture (e.g., the invention of print, film, television and internet)? How do specific genres (e.g. thriller, western, detective…) relate to or differ from each other in various media (film, literature, TV)? What about remediation: how do new media affect existing genres in ‘older’ media and vice versa.

A third line of questioning is a set of specific concepts in recent critical discourse that are related to but also transcend genre. More specifically, we are thinking about the notion of seriality that re-emerges in contemporary literature under the influence of television series, and raises questions about older forms of seriality. A second theme is the blurring of reality and fiction in a transmedial context: how does it differ from older forms of blurring boundaries in literature, for instance in the context of postmodernism?

We welcome papers from various disciplines and literatures but strongly encourage papers that have a distinct comparative literary approach and embrace interdisciplinarity.

Organisation: Anneleen Masschelein, Heidi Peeters and Gert-Jan Meyntjens

Fee: 300 € per student (covers hostel, lunch, conference dinner and coffee breaks).

Please send you proposal (500 words) before February 26, 2016 to

gertjan.meyntjens@kuleuven.be; Heidi.Peeters@arts.kuleuven.be and OSL-fgw@uva.nl

 

Reading List:    

Alber, Jan and Hansen Per Krogh (eds.). Beyond Classical Narration: Transmedial and Unnatural Challenges (Narratologia). 2014.

Bolter, David Jay and Richard Grusin. Remediation. Understanding New Media. 2000.

Collins, Jim. Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture. 2010.

Flusser, Vilém. “The Future of Writing.” 2004.

Genette, Gérard. Introduction à L’Architexte. 1979.

Gripsrud, Jostein. Understanding Media Culture. 2002.

Hutchheon, Linda. A Theory of Adaptation. 2006.

–              . A Poetics of Postmodernism. 1988.

Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. 2006.

Kittler, Friedrich. Gramophone, Film, Typewriter. 1999.

Letourneux, Matthieu. “Serializing Imports and Importing Series: France and Foreign Mass-Produced Fiction.” 2014.

McLuhan, Marshall. Understanding Media. 1964.

Mittell, Jason. Complex TV. 2015.

Ryan, Marie-Laure. Narrative across Media: The Languages of Storytelling. 2004.

–              . Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. 1992.

Ryan, Marie-Laure and Marina Grishakova (eds.). Intermediality and Storytelling (Narratologia). 2010.