The twenty-one essays collected in this volume offer a broad range of critical views on the intricate interdependence between verbal and visual representation. Drawing on recent research, scholars from Europe, America and Asia approach the topic from a host of different angles, exploring topics such as popular visual cultures in Japan, devotional graffiti in a Piedmontese chapel, textual trompe-l’oeil in Jaques Derrida’s Memoirs of the Blind or the relationship between the landscape paintings of Albert Bierstadt and the representation of landscape in the texts of James Fenimore Cooper.The International Association of Word and Image Studies was founded nearly twenty years ago – 1987 – and is based in Amsterdam. One of the aims of the association is to be a forum for both theoretical debate and innovative research in different disciplines. Over the years, the IAWIS triennial conferences and the IAWIS publications have established themselves as internationally acknowledged sites where literary critics, art historians, architects, art and design specialists, semioticians, artists, psychologists and art critics can meet and engage in a sustained dialogue.