Co-Organisers: Dr Vittoria Fallanca, Dr Rebecca Bowen and Dr Sophie König

Overview: The Perlego Oxford-Berlin Workshop explored methodological approaches to text and image studies through a cross-disciplinary and transmedial lens. The workshop asked its participants to think about theri critical approach in action, locating points of tension in our assumptions about the ‘work’ we expect texts and images to do in relation to each other, especially where this exposes the disciplinary fault lines that shape our thinking at the level of comfort as much as expertise. The workshop combined text-based discussion and short research presentations, both of which generated fruitful and stimulating discussion. Some of the questions we grappled with included:

• What are the upshots and limitations of comparative approaches to text-image analysis?
• What methods can we use to investigate historical viewing practices? How might these be related to historical practices of reading?
• Are we beholden to ‘the ineluctable modality of the visual’ (Joyce)? If not, are other hierarchies necessarily at play in text-image analysis?
• Can visual and verbal enunciation help us to move beyond the binary of the paragone between art and text?
• What is the role and function of attention in text-image study?
• Is true interdisciplinarity possible? Is it desirable?