CFP: Graphic Details Symposium: Talking About Jewish Women and Comics (February 26, 2012)

Call for Papers

Graphic Details Symposium:

Talking About Jewish Women and Comics
February 26, 2012 

at the Yeshiva University Museum in New York City

We invite papers for a one-day symposium that will explore the intersections between Jewishness and gender in comics and graphic narratives.  Key questions will include:

• What are the unique characteristics common to Jewish women cartoonists’ representations of themselves and others on the page?
• How might this particular literary genre be contextualized within the various modes of Jewish literature?
• How might sequential art constitute a unique approach for investigations of identity?
• What are some helpful theoretical modes for reading these works individually and collectively?

This interdisciplinary conference will put academics and cartoonists in dialogue with one another to discuss comics by and about Jewish women. The day of panel presentations will conclude with a cartoonist roundtable open to the public.  Confirmed participants include cartoonists Miriam Katin and Leela Corman, photographic artist Professor Joanne Leonard (University of Michigan), Dr Heike Bauer (Birkbeck College, University of London), Dr. David Brauner (University of Reading), and Professor Laurence Roth (Susquehanna University). The symposium is being presented in conjunction with Yeshiva University Museum’s exhibition, Graphic Details: Confessional Comics by Jewish Women, which is on display from September 25, 2011 - April 8, 2012. For more information, go to www.forward.com/graphic-details/

Proposals for papers or panel presentations should be emailed by Sunday, October 23, 2011 to GraphicDetailsSymposium@gmail.com. Please include up to a 500-word proposal, as well as a short bio of the presenter. Images are welcome to supplement submissions.  Here are some suggested paper or panel topics:

• The “Jewish Body” and its transformations in comics
• Jewish comic storytelling and the traditions of Jewish literature
• Confession, memoir, and autobiographical literature
• Gender identification in changing social and artistic discourses
• Comic book writing about Israel and Palestine
• Depictions of marriage, partnerships, and interfaith relationships
• Portraying Judaism and religion in graphic detail
• Mothers, daughters, and other family dynamics reflected in graphic storytelling
• Heroes and villains

This conference is being organized by Sarah Lightman (University of Glasgow), Tahneer Oksman (CUNY Graduate Center), and Amy Feinstein, Ph.D. (Independent Scholar). Our sponsors include the Yeshiva University Museum, the Jewish Daily Forward, McFarland, the Stirling Maxwell Center at University of Glasgow, and the Center for Jewish Studies and the PhD Program in English at CUNY’s Graduate Center. Unfortunately there are no grants available.