Intermediality, Teaching, and Literacy

Literacy and learning to read media forms have been somewhat underestimated, even if the wide-ranging debates about the conceptualization of the notion of intermediality involving the interrelationships between arts and media have been fruitful and achieved the status of an academic field. The concern with reading the media started to be part of the curricula around the 1980s, with the introduction of television in classrooms, in the context that Santaella calls media culture; however, these actions were often thought of from an intertextual perspective, and the systematic introduction of intermediality studies in pedagogical practices still tends to be subordinated to broader fields, such as comparative literature, film and media studies, and even art history. Among the initiatives to systematize the teaching of intermediality, Semali and Pailliotet’s stands out, which, at the turn of the century, points to the need to mobilize critical reading and writing skills with and through different systems of signs (which then come to be considered forms of media). Rajewsky, Wolf, and Elleström propose to integrate (inter)mediality into literary studies. To Bruhn, Bruhn and Gjelsvik, and Bruhn and Schirrmacher, intermediality is treated as an object and method of potential investigation, as well as a theory. Meanwhile, both Cutchins and Hallet provide attempts at systematization, the first seeking to take advantage of adaptations to teach literature and the latter aiming at an intermedial analysis of literary objects. To understand the entry of intermediality studies in pedagogical practices, and departing from the proposal of Semali and Pailliotet, the objective of this chapter is to assemble and comment published works written in the English language on literacy and the systematic teaching of intermediality.