CFP: Reading Between the Panels (Scan Journal; due Mar. 31, 2008)

Scan is a project of the Media Department @ Macquarie University, Sydney. This CFP is also available at Scan Journal's website.

Call for Papers:
Reading between the panels

Edited by:
Can Yalcinkaya – canyalcinkaya@yahoo.com
Dr Steve Collins – scollins@scmp.mq.edu.au

Comic books have been often treated deridingly as a hybrid of art and literature, but ultimately a product of low culture. Works by artists, writers and scholars including Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, Frank Miller, Scott McCloud, Will Brooker and Danny Fingeroth have forced a reappraisal of the space occupied by comic books. Over the last two decades comic book stories have diverged from hero-centric mythologies to more broadly explore areas such as the full gamut of the human psyche, sexuality, and politics. Beyond the stories themselves, the comic industry and economy has expanded to encompass underground, adult and alternative productions as well lucrative movie adaptations. This issue of Scan Journal invites submission on areas dealing with comic books and graphic novels that include, but are not restricted to:

• Studies of narrative
• Visual aesthetic
• Analysis of specific titles or characters
• Comics and adaptations/derivatives
• Fan fiction
• Comic book histories
• Economics of the comic book industry
• Comics and new media, Web comics, micropayment systems such as Bitpass, digital comics on DVD
• Comic books and intellectual property, for example copyright assignments, the pirate trade in scanned comics

Abstracts should be emailed to the editors by no later than 31st March 2008.

Full articles will adhere to the submission guidelines for Scan Journal and be emailed as a Word document attachment to the editors by Friday, 16th May 2008.

Submission guidelines can be found here.