CFP: Traumics: Comics Narratives of Trauma (Jan. 25; April 4-6)

Call for papers

Traumics:
Comics Narratives of Trauma

The 11th Annual UF Conference
on Comics and Graphic Novels

April 4th-6th, 2014

Deadline: January 25, 2014

The Graduate Comics Organization at the University of Florida invites applicants to submit proposals to the 11th UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, "Traumics: Comics Narratives of Trauma." The conference will be held from Friday April 4th 2014 to Sunday April 6th 2014. Proposals are due January 25, 2014.

Traumics are, simply put, comics plus trauma. With their syntax of panels, gutters, and pages and their use of the evocative power of image in conjunction with the precise communication of text, comics are uniquely suited to delivering narratives of trauma. The relationship of trauma (especially childhood trauma) to the comics medium is a thread that runs throughout Hillary L. Chute's 2010 Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics, a book which is structured around exploring the works of five autobiographical comics artists (Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Phoebe Gloeckner, Lynda Barry, Marjane Satrapi, and Alison Bechdel). By their very nature, comics provide a potentially ideal means through which to tell those stories which require the fragmentation and reconstruction of events of high drama and emotional intensity. The juxtaposition of images on the comic page make comics what might be considered a ‘natural' fit for exploring the concept of "Remembering, repeating, and working-through" examined so in-depth in Cathy Caruth's seminal 1996 work on trauma, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History.

More than two decades ago, Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer-winning opus, Maus, changed the way much of the reading public views comics, and is now one of the most iconic and recognizable Holocaust narratives to be studied in the classroom or found on bookstore shelves. Since the turn of the century, autobiographical comics like Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis, and Phoebe Gloeckner's Diary of a Teenage Girl have all been released to great critical acclaim. Epileptic, David B.'s autobiographical exploration of medical trauma, hugged the transition from the 1900s to the 2000s, with its original French release running from 1996 to 2003; more recently, David Small's autobiographical Stitches (2009) also forced a spotlight on medical trauma, using bold, rough graphics to recount the horror of a child's battle with cancer. Robert Kirkman's zombie survival horror comic The Walking Dead (which began its run in 2003 and continues today) has captured the American cultural imagination, with its adaptations ranging from a television show and video game to a prominent role in the most recent Halloween Horror Nights attraction at Universal Studios. Comics and war narratives (as well as war reporting) have also gone hand-in-hand for many years; just this November, noted war comics writer and artist Joe Sacco released his latest work, The Great War, which tells the story of the first day of the Battle of the Somme in one continuous, 24-foot drawing. Comics have become one of the most important and visible venues through which a 21st-century audience understands, imagines, and works through traumatic events.

We invite presentation proposals from all disciplines on the theme of "traumics: comics narratives of trauma." Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Comics and Journalism (Example: Guibert, Lefevre and Lemercier's The Photographer)
• Comics and Autobiography / Graphic Memoir (Examples: Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, David B.'s Epileptic, Phoebe Gloeckner's The Diary of a Teenage Girl and A Child's Life, David Small's Stitches)
• Comics as Blogging / In blogging (Example: Allie Brosh's Hyperbole and a Half)
• Violence in the Comics and Cultural Responses (Examples: "mainstream" violence in Marvel and DC comics, violence and the Comics Code Authority)
• Comics Go to War / Comics About War / Comics Read and/or Written on the Front Lines (Examples: The 'Nam, Commando Comics)
• The Traumatic Oeuvre of Joe Sacco
• Art Spiegelman's Maus and its Critical Reception
• How Comics Represent Trauma / Traumatic Experiences in the Comics
• Trauma and Sexuality in the Comics (For example, in the work of Alan Moore)
• Rape and Sexual Assault in the Comics / The Discussion Thereof (See: The recent controversy surrounding Mark Millar's "rape comments")
• Trauma and Manga (For example, in the work of Osamu Tezuka and Hagio Moto)
• Childhood and Trauma in the Comics
• Childhood and Trauma in Illustrated Books and Children's Picture Books (Examples: Neil Gaiman's Coraline, Maurice Sendak's Outside Over There)
• The Imagetext of the Newspaper / How Trauma is Reported through Media

"Traumics: Comics Narratives of Trauma" will consider proposals from graduate students, professors, independent scholars, undergraduates and other academics, and all proposals will be judged based on merit. The conference will be free to attend and open to the public.

Graduate papers presented at the conference will be eligible for consideration as Best Graduate Paper. The competition is open to non-UF graduate students and will be judged by a panel of UF professors. The winner will be awarded $250 and an opportunity to publish the full-length version of his or her paper in ImageTexT. Please indicate interest in the competition with abstract submissions.

Proposals should be between 200 and 300 words, and are due January 25, 2014. All proposals should be submitted to Mel Loucks at mloucks@ufl.edu and copied to Najwa Al-tabaa at naltabaa@ufl.edu.

CFP: A Comic of Her Own: Women Writing, Reading, and Embodying in Comics (UF) (Jan 15; Mar 15-17)

A Comic of Her Own:

Women Writing, Reading, and Embodying in Comics
10^th Annual UF Comics Conference

in association with ImageTexT
March 15-17, 2013

Keynote Speaker: Trina Robbins

Guest Artist: Leela Corman

Guest Artist: Megan Kelso

Trina Robbins’ A Century of Women Cartoonists responds to a comics history which often forgets women.  In the past few years, interest has grown around women working in the comics industry, perhaps best exemplified by Hillary Chute’s 2010 Graphic Women. Similarly, academia has made many inroads into comics and gender through scholarship on superheroines in mainstream comics. Mike Madrid’s 2009 The Supergirls: Fashion, Feminism, Fantasy, and the History of Comic Book Heroines and Jennifer Stuller’s 2010 Ink-Stained Amazons and Cinematic Warriors: Superwomen in Modern Mythology, not to mention works by Trina Robbins and Lillian Robinson, attest to this growing interest in the representation of women in comics. However, these two scholarly fields rarely engage in meaningful dialog, despite their mutual interest: the examination of women in comics, whether behind the scenes or on the page. This conference hopes to facilitate this dialog and foster the scholarly exploration of intersections between women’s writing in comics, women represented in comics, and the women who read them. To accommodate this goal, the conference will feature a mixture of formats: keynote lectures, workshops with guest artists, Q & A sessions, panel discussions, and traditional academic conference presentations.

We encourage scholarly submissions on any one of these topics, as well as proposals for papers that explore the apparent gaps between them. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Superheroines in comics—how super are they, really?
• Good Girls vs. Bad Girls in mainstream comics
• Women’s writing as autobiography
• What women want—explorations of titles that are popular with female readers
• Queer women in comics
• Girly men and manly women in comics—how is gender drawn?
• Feminist readings of mainstream comics—are women still in the refrigerator?
• Monstrous women in comics—sexed/gendered readings of monstrous, radioactive, and generally othered bodies in mainstream comics
• Female sexuality in comics—from mainstream sex goddesses to queer alternatives
• Studies of work by particular women writers and/or artists
• Challenges to the “graphic women” canon
• Girls in children's picture books and children's picture books “for girls”
• Adaptation of comics superheroines to the big screen—representational differences and challenges in media adaptation
• Women in animation—the female form in motion

Please send 250-word abstracts to imagetext@english.ufl.edu by January 15^th, 2013.

CFP: ImageNext (UF conference: Dec. 31; Mar. 26-27)

Just posted to the Comics Scholars Discussion List...

ImageNext:

Visions Past and Future Conference
University of Florida
March 26 and 27, 2010

The University of Florida's College of Liberal Arts and sciences is pleased to announce the 2010 UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, "ImageNext: Visions Past and Future," which will be held in Gainesville, Florida on March 26 and 27. Guest speakers will include UCLA's David Kunzle (The History of the Comic Strip, Father of the Comic Strip: Rodolphe Töpffer), John Porcellino (King Cat), Molly Kiely (Diary of a Dominatrix, That Kind of Girl) and University of Iowa’s Corey Creekmur (Director of the Institute for Cinema and Culture).

This year's conference will focus on "comics" - in their broadest sense, which includes animation, manga, anime, graphic novels, webcomics, political cartoons, and even some "fine art" - that explore human history and alternate histories. Comics discussed may include reimaginings of the past (both personal and cultural), projections of the future and revisions of pre-existing timelines, fictional or historical. Presentations could address comics that represent historical periods and/or genres (i.e. classic comics, steampunk, etc.) or the historical precedents of comics as we now understand them (i.e. political cartoons in nineteenth-century newspapers, narrative paintings, etc.).

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• comics in/as history (Rodolphe Topffer, George Cruikshank, John Leech)
• comics as cultural records (Maus, Persepolis, contemporary comic strips and political cartoons)
• biographical and autobiographical comics (Julie Doucet, Fun Home, With the Light, Epileptic)
• historically based genres (e.g. steampunk and cyberpunk, (post-)apocalyptic narratives)
• multiverses and alternate continuities (Crisis on Infinite Earths, 52, House of M, Marvel Zombies)
• comic book continuity reboots (Marvel, Ultimate Universe, etc.)
• the visual rhetoric of utopias and dystopias (Y The Last Man, Akira)
• the revision and reimagination of the superhero (Watchmen, Kingdom Come, Marvels, Astro City)
• comic adaptations and appropriations of literature ("Classic Comics," manga Shakespeare, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen)

Submit an abstract (250-400 words) of your presentation by December 31, 2009. Send all submissions and questions to visions@grove.ufl.edu. Please include the words "Comics Conference" in your subject heading.

The conference will be held on the University of Florida campus.

Image credit: Dylan Horrocks, from the UF Comics Conferences website.

CFP: UF 2009 - "Convergences: Comics, Culture and Globalization"

The University of Florida's
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
is pleased to announce the 2008
UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels:
"Convergences:
Comics, Culture and Globalization"
Gainesville, Florida, March 21-22, 2009.

This seventh annual conference on comics will focus on issues of globalization and reception. Comics are, now more than ever, an international phenomenon, but scholarly accounts of comics are often limited by an exclusive focus on examples from a single national or continental comics industry. This problem is exacerbated by the scarcity of translations. Furthermore, one of the many obstacles facing the emergent discipline of comics studies is the difficulty of communication between scholars working in different national and cultural contexts. This conference is intended as a small step toward meeting these challenges. The goal of this conference, therefore, is to consider the history and reception of comics on a global level. We are interested in papers that focus on international comics and animation markets, cross-cultural reception of comics, and the differential status of comics in different cultures (e.g. as a children's / mass medium or as a mainstream form of literature). Here we are using "comics" in its broadest sense, embracing animation, manga, anime, graphic novels, webcomics, political cartoons, and even some "fine art." In addition to theoretically grounded work, we encourage submission of archival and historical research.

Special guests will include Susan Napier (From Impressionism to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West), Jessica Abel (La Perdida), Matt Madden (99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style) and Sara Cooper (Founder, MLA Discussion Group on Cuban and Cuban Diaspora Cultural Production).

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• The reception of comics outside their original cultural context, both by fans (e.g. manga fandom in the United States) and by creators (e.g. American comics' influence on the development of manga and BD, the "nouvelle manga" movement).
• Connections between comics form and cultural status. How have views of the cultural position of comics (e.g. as a children's versus an adult medium or as a mass-cultural versus a literary medium) evolved differently in various cultures? What does this have to do with the formal properties of the medium, such as sequentiality and hybrid image-textuality?
• Comics as a global market: migrations of talent between multiple comics industries (e.g. the Spanish and Filipino "invasions" of British and American comics in the 1960s and 1970s, the Korean influence on U.S. animation) and cross-national collaborations (e.g. mangakas working for Marvel and DC).
• Comics studies as a global discipline. What barriers exist to the study of comics from a global perspective and to collaborations between comics scholars from different cultures? How might such barriers be removed?
• The impact of the internet on the global comics market. How have scanlations and filesharing helped or hindered global comics industries?
• Canon formation and expansion. What happens when works from unfamiliar cultural contexts (e.g. Persepolis and Epileptic) enter a national comics canon?
• Comics and travel/tourism, e.g. in Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage.
• Comics and issues of postcolonial identity, e.g. in Abouet & Oubrerie's Aya, Baru's Road to America, Horrocks's Hicksville.
• Translations of comics, both official and unofficial, e.g. scanlation. What are the unique difficulties and advantages of comics translation as opposed to prose translation? What are the unique difficulties and approaches to translating comics from different cultures? How, if at all, do "official" and "unofficial" translators approach comics translations differently?

Abstract submissions should be approximately 250-500 words in length. Presentations will be 15 minutes with 5 minutes of question and answer.

The deadline for abstract submissions is December 1, 2008. Abstracts or questions should be submitted to Aaron Kashtan at akashtan[at]english.ufl.edu or Tania Darlington at tdarlington1[at]ufl.edu. See the conference website for schedules and additional information: http://global.comic-studies.org.

CFP: Comics Conference on Sex, Gender, and Sexuality (University of Florida, 3/21-22/2008)

Just announced, and highly recommended:

The University of Florida's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is pleased to announce the 2008 UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels: "ImageSexT: Intersections of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality," which will be held in Gainesville, Florida, on March 21-22, 2008.

The sixth annual conference on comics will focus on issues of representation in the most literal sense: that of the image on the page (screen, monitor, etc.). We are interested in papers that move beyond facile reiterations of identity politics to explore the complexities and complexes of bodies and desires for artists, writers, and readers of comics. Here we are using "comics" in its broadest sense, to include animation, manga, anime, graphic novels, webcomics, political cartoons, and even some "fine art." Theoretically grounded work is preferred, but we also have an interest in archival, historical, and creative papers. The goal of this conference is to encourage interdisciplinary discussion incorporating diverse approaches to the comics representation of sex, gender, and sexuality.

Confirmed guests for this year include Phoebe Gloeckner (Diary of a Young Girl) and Gail Simone (Birds of Prey, Wonder Woman); invited guests include Jaime Hernandez (Love and Rockets).

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Autobiographical and authorial issues of sex and gender in comics, including issues of veiled autobiography, writing across gender lines, collaboration, and adaptation (Stuck Rubber Baby, Fun Home, The Authority, Fritz the Cat)
• Archival/historical work on depictions of the body, intercourse and identity including persistence and/or revision of stereotypes (Tijuana Bibles, Charles Atlas ads, homosexuality in early animation, Air Pirates Funnies)
• Who's drawing my body? Self- and Other-representations and culture wars (Goth comics, Superhero[ine] physiques, Dirty Plotte)
• Fans turn Pro (and vice versa): sex and gender issues at the boundary between and in the transition from fandom to professional comics (letters pages, undergrounds, fanzines, weblogs, fanfic, slash and doujinshi origins)
• Indeterminacy, including queer readings, secret identities, and the act of passing in and through comics (How Loathsome, Death Note, Black Hole, The Book of Lost Souls)
• "How ethics spoiled my pleasure": including how female fans read and enter comics, our implication in – and pleasure from – objectification, and the comic as part of a cultural circuit of capital and power (Girl-Wonder.org, Women in Refrigerators, Sequential Tart)
• The comic book fetish, including the materiality of the comic, the pleasure of reading, and "slabbing"
• The perversity of children's narratives (Strawberry Panic, Hikaru no Go, Lost Girls, Diary of a Young Girl)
• Politics and sex, including political allegory in comics, metaphors of otherness, and sex and censorship (V for Vendetta, Y the Last Man, Alias, Superfly)
• Representation and its necessary problems, from signifying male- or femaleness to figuring sex and desire, through drawings of bodies and acts, or depicting intimacy and pleasure (Diary of A Dominatrix, Clumsy, Playboy comics, [non-] explicit animation)
• International issues, including trade and censorship, translations, and taboos (scanlations, fansubbing, "official" translations, cross-cultural marketing and audiences)

Abstract submissions should be approximately 250-500 words in length. Presentations will be 15 minutes with 5 minutes of question and answer. The deadline for abstract submissions is December 1, 2007.

Image: UG Graphic Novel Conferences header, by Dylan Horrocks.

2007 UF Conference on Comics - "World Building: Seriality and History"

Yesterday I received the call for papers for The University of Florida's 2007 Conference on Comics, so I thought I'd post it here. This will be the fifth comics conference hosted at UF; you can find information on previous years here. I had the pleasure of attending 2003's "Underground(s)" conference, so I know that attendees will learn quite a lot from both the scholars and the cartoonist-guests.

Here's the Call for Papers:

The University of Florida's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Department of English are pleased to announce the 2007 UF Conference on Comics: "World Building: Seriality and History," which will be held in Gainesville, Florida, on March 3-4, 2007, in conjunction with the annual Game and Digital Media Studies Conference, which will be March 1-2.

This fifth annual conference on comics will focus on the construction of narrative worlds in comics, with particular emphasis on the various temporalities of the medium. We are especially interested in the ways temporality informs the status of comics as a serial medium (both in terms of serial publication as well as the serialization of time within the page) and the ways temporality relates to the representation of history and memory within the narrative. This could be in terms of personal and social history, as in Maus and Persepolis, or in terms of internal narrative histories like superhero retcons and crossovers.

Our keynote speakers for this year include Jeff Smith (Bone), Bryan Talbot (The Tale of One Bad Rat, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright), Dylan Horrocks (Hicksville), and Gail Simone (Birds of Prey, Action Comics).

We also encourage submissions that cross over with the Game and Digital Media Studies conference, on the topic of "World Building: Space and Community," particularly those that consider the role of time and space across multiple media. We will also consider two-part submissions on related topics to be presented across the two conferences, and other proposals that push the formal constraints of a conference presentation.

Abstract submissions should be approximately 250-500 words in length. Presentations will be 15 minutes with 5 minutes of question and answer.

The deadline for abstract submissions is January 1st, 2007. Abstracts should be submitted via our online conference system, which is on the conference website at http://www.english.ufl.edu/worlds . Please direct all questions to sandifer@english.ufl.edu.

For a list of possible topics, please see the on-line call for papers. Actually, I've been kicking around some thoughts on this very topic lately; hmmmm. Maybe I'll see you there!

Image credit: World Building website.