Call for Papers: Writings of the Image

Edited by Marco Antonio Bazzocchi, Claudio Marra, Filippo Milani

Download the Call for Papers (PDF)

 

The meeting and interaction between literature and visual culture, while phenomena well rooted from a historical perspective, have further intensified and enriched during the twentieth century and the new millennium. In light of this broad and articulated range of interests, the new call for papers by “piano b” seeks contributions that can reflect, with full methodological and thematic freedom, on the outcomes of this stimulating collaboration. Proposals will therefore be welcomed that investigate the presence of various types of images (paintings, photographs, film stills, etc.) that function within literary texts, both as producers of narrative writings and as elements that give rise to various forms of iconotextual expressions. In particular, the interest is generally directed at writers who engage with the visual within their works or make it the starting point for creative paths, including through the direct use of drawing and photography, or in collaboration with artists from various fields (painters, photographers, illustrators). Another research perspective could be biographical accounts of writers or artists, in which images play a decisive role. An additional point of interest concerns how major art historians have used photographic materials to illustrate works analyzed in their scholarly writings. A common thread across all these lines of inquiry is the narrative role of ekphrasis as a rhetorical strategy aimed at describing images on the page, in an attempt to translate an image into words as effectively as possible, engaging the reader's sense of sight and imagination.

The following lines of investigation are suggested, without excluding further possibilities:

• Art, artworks, and artists (real or imagined) as plot devices in stories and novels.
• Literary cases that outline a theory of the image (painting or photography)
• Works of art photographed and described in major art books of the 20th century
• Images that migrate from one era to another, images that are reborn (as in the case of the Warburgian Atlas)
• Portraits, self-portraits, biographies of writers that use, in addition to writing, photographs and drawings
• Visual devices (microscopes, telescopes, glasses, lenses, etc.) used in the plots of stories and novels
• Writers who used the camera at the beginning of the 20th century

 

Submissions guidelines

From this issue onward, proposal selection will no longer be based on the evaluation of abstract, rather on the complete contribution (30.000/40.000 characters, including notes and spaces). Additionally, the submission process for proposal has changed.

Authors must submit their articles via the journal’s platform using a 5-step proposal submission process.

The file containing the proposal text must not display author's name appearing below the title, in the notes, or in the bibliographic references (where it will be replaced with ***). The name of the author should not be made explicit in any way. References that would allow the author himself or herself to be traced should also be excluded, otherwise the proposal will not be considered. Moreover, file properties must be devoid of names or other personal details, using the anonymization functions provided by various word processing programs (see instructions on how to Ensure Double-Blind Review for more information).

The anonymized contribution file must be uploaded during step 2 of the submission process. The text must conform to the formatting guidelines.

Metadata entry will occur during step 3 of the process and must include the following information:

1. For each author: first name and last name, email, ORCiD identifier (if available), institutional affiliation, country, and a brief biography (maximum 1000 characters, including spaces);
2. Title;
3. Abstract (maximum 1500 characters, including spaces);
4. Five keywords separated by semicolons;

Contributions can be written in Italian, English, and French. When submitting a contribution in Italian or French, the title and abstract must also be provided in English using the "Language of Forms" function on the platform.

Proposals submitted through other methods will not be considered.

 

Timeline

Proposals must be submitted by May 18, 2025. Each contribution will undergo a double-blind peer review process. If the judgments of the two referees are not aligned, the editors will decide (in dialogue with the curators) whether to proceed with the publication or to send it to a third referee. The editorial staff will reach out the authors to convey the outcome of the evaluation.

Vol. 10 No. 1 is scheduled for release before the end of 2025.