CFP: International French-Language Comics Conference (July 25; Nov. 2-3)

Call for Papers
International French-Language Comics Conference
Miami University (Oxford, Ohio, U.S.A.)
2-3 November 2012
Papers
Critical and theoretical presentations in all areas of French-language comics are invited. The conference will help consolidate recent gains in English-language scholarship on French-language comics and will showcase new avenues of research. Publication of revised versions of a selection of the conference papers is planned in the peer-reviewed journal European Comic Art (http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/eca/).

Proposals
Please send the following material in a Word document (doc or docx) to Mark McKinney (mckinnm@muohio.edu) by 25 July 2012: a 150-word abstract and a 100-word bio-bibliography. All presentations will be in English.

Keynote speakers
Clément Baloup, a cartoonist of Vietnamese and French heritage, has published several graphic narratives devoted to Vietnamese and other groups in France and elsewhere from the colonial period to the present. These include two historical fictions, both with Mathieu Jiro: Le chemin de Tuan [Tuan's Way] (Seuil, 2005) and Le choix de Hai [Hai's Choice] (Seuil, 2007). He has authored two biographical works, Quitter Saigon: Mémoires de Viet Kieu [Leaving Saigon: Memories of Viet Kieu] (La Boîte à Bulles, 2006, 2010) and Little Saigon: Mémoires de Viet Kieu (La Boîte à Bulles, 2012), which respectively tell the stories of Vietnamese emigrants to France and the United States. Baloup has also published Un automne à Hànôi [An Autumn in Hanoi] (La Boîte à Bulles, 2004), about his time at the fine arts school of Hanoi. He earned degrees in art at the École Européenne Supérieure de l'Image in Angoulême, France, and at the École des Beaux-Arts de Hanoï, in Vietnam.

Thierry Smolderen is professor at the Ecole Européenne Supérieure de l'Image in Angoulême, where he has been teaching since 1994, and where he coordinates a Masters degree program in comics, together with the University of Poitiers. Among his many publications are Hergé, portrait biographique [Hergé, A Biographical Portrait] (with Pierre Sterckx; Casterman, 1988), and the recent Naissances de la bande dessinée, de William Hogarth à Winsor McCay [The Birth of Comics: From William Hogarth to Winsor McCay] (Les Impressions nouvelles, 2009), which explores the beginnings of the art form from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries, and is forthcoming in English translation with the University Press of Mississippi. He was a frequent contributor to Les Cahiers de la bande dessinée and Neuvième art. Professor Smolderen has curated numerous comics exhibitions in France and Belgium. He is also an accomplished script-writer of comics.

Registration
Presenters who do not have an up-to-date subscription to European Comic Art will be asked to subscribe with Berghahn. There will also be a reasonable registration fee to pay for conference meals. Information about these fees and about lodging options will be forthcoming.

Sponsors
Sponsors at Miami University include the L.P. Irvin Fund of the Department of French and Italian, the Miami University Special Events Fund, the Humanities Center, the International Visiting Scholar Exchange Fund (from the Office of International Education), Honors and Scholars Program, the International Studies Program, the Department of GREAL, and the Center for American and World Cultures.