CFP: Comics and Conflicts (UK) (Mar 31; Aug 19-20)

Roehampton University in association with Comica Festival

and Panel Borders on Resonance FM present the 2011 Conference

Comics and Conflicts

August 19th & 20th,

Imperial War Museum, London

Roehampton University Department of English and Creative Writing in association with the Imperial War Museum and Comica Festival welcome papers that explore the ways in which comics around the world represent and articulate the experience and impact of war and conflict. The Conference is aimed at scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts.

Topics may include:

• Depictions of Conflict in comics created for children
• Representations of trauma in comic books, graphic novels, manga & other forms of international comics.
• Visual representations of conflict in such places as Afghanistan, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, The Middle East, Northern Ireland, and Vietnam.
• Journalism, biography, and memoir in comics on conflict
• Focus on key practitioners such as Guibert, Kubert, Mills, Sacco, Satrapi, Spiegelman, Tardi & Trudeau
• Comics as a space to depict/critique national ideology.
• Comics as tools of propaganda, both of the state and of protest organisations.

Keynote Speakers:

• Pat Mills, writer of Charley’s War
• Martin Barker and Roger Sabin on Doonesbury

Special Guest Practitioners :

• Garth Ennis, writer of Troubled Souls and War Story
• Jacques Tardi and Jean-Pierre Verney (tbc). Tardi has won every French cartooning award including the Grand Prize of Angoulême, and has created over 30 graphic novels in a wide variety of genres, including World War I story Putain de guerre. He is currently working on another World War I volume

About the Organisers:

• Alex Fitch presents Panel Borders, the UK's only weekly broadcast radio show about comics, Thursdays on Resonance FM, the Arts Council Radio station in London. Resonance's remit is to celebrate London’s vast cultural diversity and creativity and is a two time winner of the Radio Academy’s Nations & Regions Award for London.
• Ariel Kahn is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Roehampton University, and teaches comics theory and practice on both BA and MA. He contributed to The Jewish Graphic novel (ed Baskind, Omer-Sherman) and writes regularly for IJOCA and other publications.
• Paul Gravett is a London-based freelance journalist, curator, lecturer, writer and broadcaster, who has worked in comics publishing and promotion since 1981. He has curated numerous exhibitions of comic art in Britain and in Europe, including 'God Save The Comics!' a survey of British comic art at the National Comics and Image Centre in Angoulême, France and the first exhibit devoted to the writer Alan Moore and his collaborators at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Charleroi, Belgium. Since 2003, Paul has been the director of Comica, London's International Comics Festival at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. He writes about comics for The Guardian, The Times, The Independent, The Daily Telegraph, The Comics Journal, Comic Art, Comics International, Third Text, 9eme Art and many others.

Venue:The Imperial War Museum established in 1920, is unique in its coverage of conflicts, especially those involving Britain and the Commonwealth, from the First World War to the present day. It seeks to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern conflict and ‘war-time experience’. It is proud to be regarded as one London’s essential sights.

Updates:
For up-to-date information on the event, including details on the keynote speakers, special guests and registration, visit the conference page at the Comica Festival website: www.comicafestival.com

Email abstracts of 250 words, with a brief author biography, to:
a.kahn@roehampton.ac.uk

Please include Comics and Conflicts 2011 in the subject heading.

Deadline for submissions is March 31, 2011.