The 2012 conference organizing committee is pleased to announce the meeting of the International Society for the Empirical Study of Literature and Media in Montréal on July 7-10. The conference will begin Saturday evening (July 7) and run through Tuesday evening (July 10). The IGEL Summer Institute will be held on Saturday, July 7.
We hope that the conference will provide a stimulating and inspiring meeting for researchers and scholars from the many fields that contribute to IGEL. To that end, we have arranged three keynote events that showcase cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research from a range of perspectives. On Sunday (July 8), Catherine Emmott (University of Glasgow) will speak on “Bridging stylistics and psychology: The empirical study of rhetorical processing”; on Monday (July 9), Marcel Just (Carnegie Mellon University) will speak on “Neuroscience perspectives on comprehension of literal and figurative language”; and on Tuesday (July 10) Ted Sanders and Jose Sanders have organized a symposium on “Perspective: Its construction, representation, and function in narrative discourse.” The symposium is jointly sponsored by IGEL and the Society for Text & Discourse. Further details can be found on our program highlights page.
Unique to this conference is the back-to-back meeting of three societies concerned with text, discourse, and reading. The IGEL conference will be held in conjunction with the Society for Text & Discourse, which is meeting at Le Westin July 10-12, and the Society for the Scientific Study of Reading, which is meeting at Le Westin July 11-15. There will be a joint symposium and reception/poster session with the Society for Text & Discourse on the evening of July 10. Further, we have arranged discounted registration fees for anyone who wishes to attend the STD and SSSR meetings as well as IGEL. See our registration page for details.
Montréal is a unique, vibrant urban centre, with a rich cultural heritage and a wide range of entertainment possibilities. More information on Montréal can be found on our links page. The conference will be held in Le Westin, a new luxury hotel in a redeveloped historical building in Old Montréal; Le Westin provides an ideal site for our meeting, with excellent facilities and easy access to many exciting features of Montréal.