Study and Development Fellowships for Sessional Lecturers (CUPE 3913 Unit-2)

One of the least-explored areas in the field of Hispanic literary studies is the interrelationship between the visual arts and literature. Although there have been far-reaching developments in the field of the visual arts and in comparative approaches to literary studies, there has been little production in the confluences of the visual arts and literature and the cultural projection and dissemination of cultural values that take place in the exchange image/word. Some of the common approaches to the interaction between literature and the visual arts propose the reading of images as texts, treating the image as an import or an extension of language that ought to be articulated or subordinated by language. This is not an innovative method, nor is reading texts for the imagery. As W.J.T. Mitchell writes in Picture Theory (1994), " The notion that images may be read as texts is hardly news in art history these days: it is the prevailing wisdom, the latest thing. On the side of literary study, reading texts for the 'imagery' is definitely not the prevailing wisdom: it is as old as the hills. It is seen as an outmoded paradigm. .. at the expense of real cultural history " (99). I stress this because the above mentioned approaches consist mainly of examining and matching verbal and nonverbal contexts. To enable innovative work this will involve not only a larger analytic framework but also an approach that moves beyond the existing boundaries of discourse, considers methods and methodologies associated with each of these particular areas of study, and takes into account that the interrelationship image/text can be rendered legible without effacing the one from the discourse of the other. My goal is to bring together the visual arts and literature not just as complementary partners but as disciplines invested with their own historical, social, and cultural values. Thus I aim to create an environment where learning is mediated or