CFP: Comic Books and Graphic Novels / NEMLA (Sept. 30; Mar. 21-24)

Calls for papers: 

Comic Books and Graphic Novels

Northeast Modern Language Association (NEMLA)

44th Annual Convention

March 21 to 24, 2013

Boston, Massachusetts

Hosted by Tufts University

The 2013 NEMLA convention continues the Association’s tradition of sharing innovative scholarship in an engaging and generative location. The 44th annual event will be held in historic Boston, Massachusetts, a city known for its national and maritime history, academic facilities and collections, vibrant art, theatre, and food scenes, and blend of architecture. The Convention, located centrally near Boston Commons and the Theatre District at the Hyatt Regency, will include keynote and guest speakers, literary readings, film screenings, tours and workshops.

Interested participants may submit abstracts to more than one NEMLA session; however, panelists can only present one paper (panel or seminar). Convention participants may present a paper at a panel and also present at a creative session or participate in a roundtable.  A/V requirements include a $10 handling fee to be paid with conference registration.

For more information on numerous panels, please visit the NEMLA call for papers web site.

Panels and Pedagogy: Teaching the Graphic Novel

This panel works towards understanding and adding to emerging pedagogies of the graphic novel and other forms of illustrated works. What do these visual texts change about how we approach the classroom? Possible topics include but are not limited to adaptation and teaching across mediums and disciplines; the graphic novel as literature; approaches to visuality as composition; and the limits of genre and medium. Submit 250- to 500-word proposals by September 30, 2012, to Joel Simundich (joel_simundich@brown.edu) and Derek McGrath (derek.mcgrath@stonybrook.edu).

The Sequential Monster:  Reading Comics as Monstrous

Comic books, graphic novels and webcomics generally combine words and images to create narratives. Though comics are often considered a form in their own right, it is also possible to see them as an amalgam of disparate forms of communication. If we think of comics that way, perhaps we can see them, fruitfully, as monstrous: beasts that combine the elements of verbal and visual, narrative and static communication forms.  This panel will examine a social understanding of the comics form (and the kinds of literacies required to accept it) using Scott McCloud’s and Will Eisner’s comics theories as well as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen’s monster theory.  Abstracts of 300 words to lauere@sunysuffolk.edu by September 30.

Show and Tell: A Roundtable of Comic Book and Graphic Novel Creators

This event hosts artists from a wide spectrum of roles as related to the creation of comic books and graphic novels. This roundtable welcomes participants from around the world and regardless of genre, medium, or years of experience. Artists in the roundtable should bring visual materials to facilitate discussion with a diverse audience of students, professors, and overall fans of this art form. Submit resumes by September 30, 2012, to Derek McGrath at SUNY Stony Brook (derek.mcgrath@stonybrook.edu).

CFP: Canadian Graphic Life Narratives (essay collection; October 15)

Call For Papers

Canadian Graphic Life Narratives

A collection of essays edited by

Candida Rifkind and Linda Warley

Canadian comics authors have been at the forefront of the international boom in book-length comics, particularly the forms of life writing increasingly known as "autographics" (a term coined by Gillian Whitlock and Anna Poletti). From biography to autobiography (real and fictionalized), memoir, family portrait, oral history, diary, confession, travel writing, and the sketch, over the past two decades a diverse group of Canadian cartoonists has experimented with visual and verbal forms to tell all kinds of personal life stories in sequential comics.

This volume of essays will be the first definitive collection in Canadian life writing studies that considers some of the following questions: why are Canadian cartoonists producing so many works that could be analyzed as life writing? What is the relationship between visual representation and verbal narrative? What relations are there between Canadian graphic life narratives and international texts that have garnered more popular and academic attention (eg. Spiegelman’s Maus, Satrapi’s Persepolis, Bechdel’s Fun Home)? What can studies of Canadian life writing comics tell us about larger questions, such as identity, history, nation, memory? How do life narratives intersect with or depart from other discursive constructions of Canadian "selves"? Where is the line between "real" and "fictionalized" lives?

We invite contributions on any aspect of life writing in Canadian comics. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• authority and authenticity
• intergenerational narratives
• history, memory, inheritance
• the Bildungsroman and Kunstlerroman
• international influences and border-crossings
• Aboriginal and Métis graphic life writing
• gender, sexuality, bodies
• ethnicity, race, nationality
• space and place
• celebrity, fame, infamy
• community, collective, collaborative life narratives
• magical realism, anti-realism, surrealism, fantasy
• life writing comics and youth cultures
• visual experiments and innovations
• Canadian comics publishing and print culture

Cartoonists may include, but are not limited to: Seth, Joe Matt, Chester Brown, Julie Doucet, David Collier, Guy Delisle, Michel Rabagliati, Bernice Eisenstein, Ann-Marie Fleming, Ho Che Anderson, Diane Obomsawin, Jeff Lemire, Pascal Girard, Scott Chantler, Jillian Tamaki, Michael Cho, Line Gamache, Dave Lapp, and Philippe Gerard.

Please send a 500-word proposal and a short biographical note as a Word attachment to both editors by October 15, 2012.

Completed essays of 6,000-8,000 words (MLA style) will be due on March 1, 2013.

Dr. Candida Rifkind,  University of Winnipeg, c.rifkind@uwinnipeg.ca
Dr. Linda Warley, University of Waterloo, lwarley@uwaterloo.ca