[Commlist] CFP: Intermedial Studies and New Materialisms

*Call for Papers*
*Intermedial Studies and New Materialisms*

In light of challenges posed by the rapidly changing world, including 
the environmental crisis, accelerated digitalization, and the 
implementation of AI technologies, media researchers and intermedial 
scholars have increasingly turned their attention to questions of 
ecology, material processes, and nonhuman agency. This shift reflects a 
growing recognition of the need to reconsider and expand media-centred 
approaches and to engage critically with broader questions that extend 
beyond mediation itself.
Responding to this need, we propose a special issue that brings together 
the broad field of intermediality and intermedial studies with a set of 
critical frameworks known as “new materialisms”. New materialist 
theories emerged partly in response to the linguistic and cultural 
turns, emphasizing the inseparability of the discursive and the 
material, what Karen Barad (2007) describes as the entanglement of 
matter and meaning. New materialisms also challenge anthropocentric 
worldviews by foregrounding nonhuman agencies and questioning 
assumptions of human dominance that can justify environmental 
exploitation. The emphasis on material-discursive entanglements, 
material agency, and the ecological implications of new materialist 
approaches invites a rethinking of media and intermedial relations in 
non-anthropocentric terms. It also opens up broader discussions about 
agency, intermedial practices, and their environmental dimensions. 
Following new materialist thought, media are not mere tools for 
communicating ideas or representing the world; rather, they are 
material-discursive practices that entangle humans, nonhuman 
technologies, and environments in the ongoing becoming of the world. New 
materialist approaches shift the focus from fixed entities and 
categories to processes, relationality, and the agency of matter.
We invite contributions that examine the points of connection and 
tension between new materialist and intermedial frameworks. Articles may 
be theory-oriented or may combine theoretical discussion with analyses 
of specific case studies. This call for papers emerges from 
international workshops held at the Linnaeus University Centre for 
Intermedial and Multimodal Studies, which brought together scholars 
working across intermedial studies, comparative literature, science and 
technology studies, film studies, visual culture, theatre studies, and 
philosophy. The group is now working towards a joint publication. We 
invite contributions to expand the collection and bring further 
perspectives into the conversation. We are currently considering two 
possible publication venues. We are in discussion with established 
journals in the field regarding a special issue. Alternatively, the 
contributions maybe developed into an edited collection in the /Palgrave 
Studies in Intermediality /series. No payment from the authors will be 
required.

If you are interested in contributing to this project, please submit an 
abstract of no more than 500 words to _jorgen.bruhn@lnu.se_ 
<mailto:(jorgen.bruhn /at/ lnu.se)>.
*Important Dates:*
Abstract deadline: 15 October 2026
Full article manuscript deadline: 15 March 2027
*Editors:*
Jørgen Bruhn, Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the 
Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies and 
Silvia Kurr, Postdoctoral Researcher (University of Tartu and Linnaeus 
University).

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