CFP: Everydayness in an Intermedial Perspective
October 9, 2026International Workshop on Intermediality
Linnaeus University, Campus Växjö, Sweden
12–14 May 2027
Hosted by Linnaeus University, Växjö, Sweden.
Organized by the Linnaeus University Centre for Intermedial and Multimodal Studies.
Our contemporary world is increasingly shaped by ecological crisis, political uncertainty, wars, economic precarity, technological acceleration, and rapidly changing media environments. These interconnected challenges are often described as a polycrisis: a situation in which multiple crises overlap, interact, and reinforce one another. Yet we do not encounter such crises solely as external events. We anticipate and grow anxious as we read the news; we fear and seek distraction as we watch TV series; we search for ways to mourn what has been lost while still holding onto hope as we listen to music. Thus, we experience them affectively.
Media play a central role in shaping affective experiences of contemporary polycrisis. They influence how crises are perceived, interpreted, remembered, imagined, and felt. Media participate in the circulation of affects that shape collective moods, public behaviors, political attitudes, and responses to uncertainty and change. At the same time, media are not merely observers of crises but are implicated in their production, from the environmental costs of technological progress to the social, cultural, and political transformations associated with digital platforms and artificial intelligence.
Our workshop invites doctoral students and researchers to apply intermedial and multimodal approaches to the study of polycrisis and its affective aspects. We are particularly interested in how different affective experiences emerge through encounters between media forms, technologies, and modes of perception; how affects circulate across media environments; and how intermedial and multimodal frameworks can deepen our understanding of contemporary social, cultural, political, environmental, and technological challenges. Contributions may examine digital and analog media, including poetry, literature, film, television, music, visual art, games, social media, exhibitions, performances, and other forms of expression.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
- Affective experiences of polycrisis across media
- Intermedial and multimodal mediations of contemporary crises
- Media, affect, and the formation of public feelings, behaviors, and attitudes
- Embodied experiences of crisis in intermedial contexts
- Artificial intelligence, technological change, and affective cultures of crisis
- Memory, futurity, and the alternative temporal imageries of crises
- Media ecologies, affective economies, and the production of crises
Submissions
Please send an abstract of up to 300 words (incl. references) and a short bio. Submit proposals to imsworkshop2027@lnu.se by 15 December 2026.
Presentations should be 15 minutes in length.
