In this seminar, we are interested in exploring various complexities of the encounters that occur through media. Textual and visual media offer the possibility of encounter in many regards, as objects to be encountered, or in the encounters that may or may not occur between author and reader, separated by time and space. Performative and auditory media generate paradigms of encounter between creator and receiver, and the means by which the work is delivered shapes the nature of their interactions with the work itself, and with each other. Digital media too, are frequently seen as vehicles of interactivity, connecting individuals across national and linguistic borders. Rarely, however, are mediated encounters so straightforward; layers of imagination, expectation and noise factor into the creation of the other that is perceived, distinct from the other that exists in reality. And of course, our very existence in reality is itself affected by our encounters with other bodies—gazes, voices, gestures, touches, texts. How might we position encounters that happen through and across the aesthetic boundaries of texts (broadly construed) within the context of their analysis? Are there certain works or genres of work that facilitate encounter, or for which encounter becomes a vital aspect of the work itself? 

We invite proposals that seek to elucidate dimensions of encounter, within any manner of media, through unique frameworks. Topics may be regionally localized or globally oriented, and likewise either focused on a specific medium of interest or comparative across mediums. Our specific focus is on print and digital mediums, with a preference for work that functions on a comparative, interdisciplinary, or meta-level of analysis.

Potential keywords of interest for this line of inquiry include but are no means limited to:

Affect
Affordance
Aura
Community
Diaspora
Distance (or distancing) / Intimacy
Embodiment
Fourth Wall and Aesthetic Boundaries
Friction
Haptics
Hermeneutics
Hypertext and Digital Fiction
Identity and Identification
Information Theory
Interactivity
Interface
Intermedia
Materialisms
Narrative and Narratological frameworks
Performativity
Phenomenology
Platform
Reproducibility
Silence
Translation
Transportation
Violence
Virtuality