"Sull'orlo del visibile", USI hosts the Swiss Association for General and Comparative Literature
Institutional Communication Service
13 November 2023
On Thursday 16 and Friday 17 November 2023, Università della Svizzera italiana will host the Swiss Association of General and Comparative Literature (ASLGC/SGAVL) for its annual congress "Sull'orlo del visibile" (On the brink of the visible).
The congress, organised for the first time in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, intends to take stock of the changing landscape behind the binomial "comparative literatures and visuality", coinciding with the centenary of the birth of a pioneer of inter Artes studies such as the Ticino-born Giovanni Pozzi (Locarno, 1923 - Lugano, 2002).
Swiss and European scholars will meet in Lugano to discuss questions of fundamental importance for both comparative and visual studies: What effect has the advent of visual culture and intermediality studies had on this field? What place can intermediality in comparative studies, particularly in relation to the visual, have in present-day comparative studies? Is intermediality in comparative studies destined to become a branch of visual culture or intermediality studies, or should the specificity of the comparative approach in this field be preserved?
More generally, questioning comparative studies and visuality means confronting capital issues in contemporary societies, starting with the challenge of coexistence within cultural ecosystems increasingly pervaded by hybrid medialities.
