Bringing together an international group of scholars and students from various academic backgrounds, the conference will explore and re-evaluate the role of changing relationships between literary texts and visual arts (paintings, graphic arts, photography) in the evolution of American literary culture. The conference will offer an opportunity to discuss traditions as well as modes of experimentation in transgressing generic categories. It will address questions connected with cross-breeding of art forms, which stimulates artistic expression and response. In search of conference motto, the organizers turn to Charles Baudelaire's words: "The arts inspire, if not compliment one another, at least to lend one another new energies."

Among the issues to be discussed are:
- text/image/hybridity: the role the visual in creating textual meaning, or the role of text in shaping visual image
- painting and photography as sources of influence for writers, or literary texts as inspiration for artists and photographers
- techniques of painting, graphic arts, and photography in literary texts
- synaesthetic qualities of literary texts
- pictorial narratives
- illustrations, book covers, dust jackets, frontispieces in books by American authors
- editorial art as textual component

Conference organizers welcome proposals (maximum 250 words) for panels and 20-minute papers in English from scholars and students working in all areas of literary, artistic and cultural studies. Deadline for submissions is May 15, 2012. Please, send abstracts to the following address: visuality2012@yahoo.com Selected papers will be published.