Call for papers

Call open

Telling the Landscape

edited by Anne-Laure Amilhat-Szary (Université Grenoble Alpes), Anna Chiara Cimoli (Università degli studi di Bergamo), Leo Lecci (Università degli studi di Genova), Paola Valenti (Università degli studi di Genova)

 

In October 2023, the international symposium Telling the Contemporary Landscape in Art. Photography, Phototext, Literature, Painting, Performance, Video Art was held at the School of Humanities of the University of Genoa. It took place in the margins of Stefano De Luigi’s exhibition Il Bel Paese (The Beautiful Country), the result of a project realised in collaboration with Palazzo Ducale di Genova-Fondazione per la Cultura and Archivio di Arte Contemporanea dell’Università di Genova (AdAC), the winner of the Photography Strategy 2022 call for proposals promoted and financed by the Direzione Generale Creatività Contemporanea (DGCC) of the Ministry of Culture.

The exhibition, set up in the spaces of the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa (14/9–15/10/2023), presented the photos taken by Stefano De Luigi during a journey along the Italian coasts, in search of landscapes capable of placing themselves between individual and collective memories, centre and periphery, experienced and forgotten places.

These are some of the themes that passed, almost by osmosis, from the exhibition project to the international symposium. During the conference, numerous topics were developed concerning the interdisciplinary nature implicit in the narrative and multimedia representation of the contemporary landscape: from painting, photography and video – as well as the semantic implications inherent in the dialectic between landscape and territory – to the more intimist and evocative aspects linked to the memory of the landscape (Clément 2005, Roger 2009, Iacoli 2012, Valtorta 2013, Méaux 2022, Hutton 2022, Metta 2022).

The multifaceted nature of the contributions is an indication of the fact that landscape, understood in the most open and transversal sense of the term, is more present than ever in contemporary reflection, especially in light of our new awareness of its fragility: hence, the desire to develop new studies on the margins of the international symposium and to broaden the range of related thematic perspectives, inviting scholars to propose reflections on the declinations of the narrative of landscape in our time.

Therefore, in the next issue of Elephant & Castle, the section dedicated to an in-depth study of the research presented during the symposium will be flanked by another one intended to develop further perspectives on the following topics:

- terminological or semantic reflections on the concept of landscape

- the landscape as a place of relationship between humankind and nature

- the social and intimist dimensions of landscape

- landscape as an analogy or literary metaphor

- landscape as an expression of the relationship between téchne and contemporary arts

- landscape as a product of social dynamics or contrasts, the theatre of gender or de/post-colonial conflicts

- investigations into stereotypical narratives related to the concept of landscape.

 

In addition to a concise abstract for the proposal (800 characters, in the article’s language and in English), authors are requested to send a document containing a short biography and five keywords. The materials required to participate in the call must be sent no later than 1^st of April 2025 to both of the following email addresses:

paesaggio2025@gmail.com and elephantandcastle@unibg.it

The editors’ decision will be communicated by 30 April 2025.

The selected articles, which must strictly adhere to the editorial standards of Elephant & Castle, will undergo a double-blind peer review process according to the journal’s specific procedures. To ensure internationalisation, submissions in English, French and Italian will be accepted.

The length of submissions must not exceed 35,000 characters, including spaces and bibliographies. Articles must be uploaded to the journal website by 1^st of September 2025. Publication is planned for December 2025.

 

Bibliographic suggestions:

BAILLY J.-C. (2011), Le dépaysement. Voyages en France, Éditions du Seuil, Paris.
BERQUE A. (2022), Pensare il paesaggio, Mimesis, Milan.
CLÉMENT G. (2005), Manifesto del terzo paesaggio, Quodlibet, Macerata.
DAL BORGO A.G., GAVINELLI D. (eds) (2012), Il paesaggio nelle scienze umane. Approcci, prospettive e casi di studio, Mimesis, Milan.
DELUE R., ELKINS J. (eds) (2007), Landscape Theory, Routledge, Abingdon-London.
EAD. (2019), Enquêtes. Nouvelles formes de photographie documentaire, Filigranes Éditions, Trézélan.
EAD. (2015), Géo-photographies. Vers une investigation renouvelée du territoire, Filigranes Éditions, Trézélan.
FRANCHI F., PAGANI F. (2022), Il giardino come macchina delle emozioni Dall’antichità alla sostenibilità contemporanea, Quodlibet, Macerata.
GIROT C., IMHOF D. (eds) (2016), Thinking the Contemporary Landscape, Princeton Architectural Press, Princeton.
GUGLIELMI M., IACOLI G. (eds) (2012), Piani sul mondo. Le mappe nell’immaginazione letteraria, Quodlibet, Macerata.
HOWARD P., THOMPSON I., WATERTON E., ATHA M. (eds) (2019), The Routledge Companion to Landscape Studies, Routledge, Abingdon-London.
HUTTON J. (2022), Reciprocal Landscapes: Stories of Material Movements, Routledge, Abingdon-London.
IACOLI G. (ed) (2012), Discipline del paesaggio, Mimesis, Milan.
JAKOB M. (2005), Paesaggio e letteratura, Olschki, Florence.
ID. (2009), Il paesaggio, Il Mulino, Bologna.
METTA A. (2022), Il paesaggio è un mostro. Città selvatiche e nature ibride, DeriveApprodi, Bologna.
MEAUX D. (2022), Photographie contemporaine & anthropocène, Filigranes Éditions, Trézélan.
ROGER A. (2009), Breve trattato sul paesaggio, Sellerio, Palermo.
SETTIS S. (2010), Paesaggio, costituzione, cemento. La battaglia per l’ambiente contro il degrado civile, Einaudi, Turin.
VALTORTA R. (2013), Luogo e identità nella fotografia italiana contemporanea, Einaudi, Turin.
WYLIE J. (2007), Landscape, Routledge, Abingdon-London.