Call for Papers, International Conference of the Institute for Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture, University of Salzburg, based in Krems an der Donau

Date: 02-04 March 2026

Place: Krems an der Donau (Austria)

In recent years, IMAREAL has developed a research focus on materials and substances as culture-forming factors. The focus has been on the question of how materials contribute to the creation of meaning and cultural dynamics. A key finding was that material properties and material-indexed meanings are not perceived as given, but rather emerge or fade into the background through observation, interaction with things and materials, their interaction among another, as well as through their discursivization in concrete settings – so-called constellations. The process of this attribution of meaning can be well summarized with the concept of aspectivisation: Static properties are replaced by aspects, each of which can be described relationally and analyzed in terms of their specific cultural meaning. 

Building on this, the new research focus “Intermateriality” focuses on the interaction and cooperation of two or many different materials. Materials rarely appear as individual entities, they are combined with others both as natural and synthetic materials; artifacts are often made of several materials or brought into relationship with each other in social evaluations and semioses. The term “intermateriality” is understood as a framework concept for these diverse material relationships. It is precisely these relationships and their qualifications that interest us. The aim of the conference is to gain input for the work on this framework concept from different disciplinary perspectives and to set an initial impulse for a corresponding international and interdisciplinary research network.  Based on these considerations, the focus is on the following questions: 

• Intermateriality as a constellation: At which points can which types of intermateriality be observed in the pre-modern era? 
• Which intermaterial constellations are manifested textually or visually, and for what reasons? 
• Intermateriality as a mode: What is the relationship between observation, ‘Making’ and discourse for the perception and sensory classification of material relationships?  
• What role does the material knowledge generated in this process play in relation to natural and synthetic materials?  
• How do shaping practices and discourses generate knowledge about material relationships? 
• How and why do these perspectives and their representations change?  
• Body and inter-materiality: What role does the human body play in its own materiality when interacting with other materials? How does material perception behave as a sensual quantity and how is this articulated in text and/or image in pre-modern times?  
• What is the relationship between intermateriality and intermediality or inter-textuality? Is  ‘inter-’ even the appropriate prefix for the conceptual framing of these phenomena? Is there a corresponding theoretical equivalent to transmediality (transmateriality)? 

The questions are intended as general suggestions for all disciplines in history and cultural studies; approaches that are not covered by these questions are also welcome. What is important to us, however, is the reference to concrete materials, also in the representation/discursivization of material or, for example, in the artistic reflection of the creative process.  

We look forward to receiving abstracts in German or English with a maximum length of 1-2 pages by September 5, 2025 to sekretariat.imareal@plus.ac.at.   

Participation in the conference is free of charge.    

Source : Imareal