CFP: Digital Comics, special issue of Networking Knowledge (July 11)

Call for Papers
Digital Comics
A special-themed issue of
Networking Knowledge,
the journal of the MeCCSA-PGN
Deadline for abstracts 11th July

The medium of comics has always evolved alongside the technology via which it is produced, distributed and consumed. In this age of easily accessible digital technologies, the comic form is undergoing a series of transformative changes. This remediation of the form has seen the medium change to accommodate the wider range of story-telling tropes and functionalities offered by the digital environment. Through portable touchscreen displays we are able to consume comics, film, animation, prose, games and other forms of interactive visual media. The multimodal capacity of these devices allows for the emergence of hybrid forms of comics which incorporate tropes from these other screen-based media.

Against this background, papers focused towards the following areas would sit well within this themed edition of Networking Knowledge:

• New and emergent digital comic forms and technologies.
• Changes to the underlying structures of the form as a result of digital mediation.
• Crossovers, adaptation and hybridisation between comics and other digital media.
• Acts of reading and the impact of digital mediation.
• Aesthetic and literary analysis of digital comic narratives.
• Digital distribution, changes in the industry and the threat of piracy.
• Webcomics, widening readerships, minority voices and fan cultures.
• Multimodality and comics relationship with larger transmedia narratives.

Other areas relevant to the study of digital comics will also be considered.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers of 5,000 to 6,000 words should be submitted via e-mail to Jayms Nichols and Daniel Merlin Goodbrey at netknow@e-merl.com by Friday 11th July 2014.

Abstracts should specify the research question and make a clear connection to one or more aspects of the digital comics theme. Proposed papers must be original and must not have been published or accepted for publication elsewhere.

If you have any questions about the issue, please e-mail the address above. If you have questions about Networking Knowledge in general, please contact the editor, Sam Ward, at aaxsjw@nottingham.ac.uk.

CFP: Writing Visual Culture: Digital Comics / journal issue (August 19)

Call for Papers
Writing Visual Culture:

Digital Comics

Writing Visual Culture is the open access, double-blind peer-reviewed journal of the University of Hertfordshire's TVAD Research Group. The journal's focus is the relationship between text, narrative and image. We are currently seeking submissions for a new themed edition examining the world of digital comics.

The medium of comics is undergoing a period of transition as the popular mode of creation, distribution and consumption shifts from print to digital display. This is a transition that has been underway since before the general adoption of the World Wide Web and recent advances in portable digital display has only served to accelerate the pace of this change.

Digital comic pioneers have pushed at the boundaries of the medium and explored the possibilities offered by the inherent interactivity of the medium and the multimodality of computing devices. Today, smart phones and tablet computers provide a single platform of consumption on which comics, film, animation, games and other interactive visual media are equally at home. Now as comics gradually leave behind the tropes and trappings of print and embrace those of the screen, we also see the emergence of new hybrid forms that appropriate tropes from other screen-based media.

Against this background, papers focused towards the following areas would sit well within our themed edition of Writing Visual Culture:

• New and emergent digital comic forms and technologies.
• Changes to the underlying structures of the form as a result of digital mediation.
• Crossovers, adaptation and hybridisation between comics and videogames.
• Motion comics and animated adaptations of the form.
• Acts of reading and the impact of digital mediation.
• Aesthetic and Literary analysis of digital comic narratives.
• Digital distribution, changes in the industry and the threat of piracy.
• Webcomics, widening readerships, minority voices and fan cultures.
• Multimodality and comics relationship with larger transmedia narratives.

Although other areas relevant to the study of digital comics will also be considered.

Abstracts of 200 words for papers of 3000 to 6000 words should be submitted via e-mail to Daniel Merlin Goodbrey at wvc@e-merl.com by Monday 19th August. Abstracts should specify the research question or issue that you are addressing and make clear the connection between your paper and the Digital Comics theme. Proposed papers must be original and not have been published already or accepted for publication elsewhere.

CFP: Comics and the Multimodal World [Comics Grid] (Douglas College, Canada) (Jan. 15; June 13-16)

Call For Papers:

Graphixia and Comics Grid
Spring Conference 2013:

Comics and the Multimodal World
13-16 June 2013, Douglas College
Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Deadline for proposals: 15 January 2013

This conference is a collaborative, multidisciplinary exploration and celebration of sequential art, multimodal narrative, and comics. We welcome submissions on any of the following themes:
 

Comics and Internationalism

• How can comics overcome the limitations of language by promoting an international language of the image?

Comics and Digital Culture

• What are the linkages between comics scholarship and the digital humanities? 
• Why are these linkages so prevalent?

Multimodal narrative and First Nations/Aboriginal Cultures

• What is the relationship between image and story in First Nations culture, and how does that relationship connect with other modes of graphic storytelling?

Comics, Information Design, and Skill Development

• How can we use comics to teach document use, visual culture, and new literacies?

As the themes suggest, the conference aims to attract scholars from a diverse set of disciplines who are interested in further defining this burgeoning academic area and linking it to other fields.

The conference will be international in scope: we will attract scholars from as many places in the world as possible. To this end, we will put out a far-reaching call for papers and announce the conference is as many ways as possible.

The conference will encourage student participation by including student-oriented sessions, workshops and/or seminars and “teach-ins” with experts in the field. The conference steering committee will investigate ways of making it as easy and desirable as possible for students to attend.

In addition to being an academic event, the conference will also be a cultural and community event, featuring a festival of sequential art alongside its academic forums, encouraging the participation of emerging local artists, comics practitioners, and book sellers.

While the conference will be centred at the New Westminster campus of Douglas College, we would like to involve other local venues, the Quay for example, in the event. Local schools and libraries may also participate. The conference will be an opportunity for Douglas College to assert itself as a community and cultural hub.

New Westminster, known as the Royal City, is a part of Metropolitan Vancouver, the third most populous urban region in Canada. Vancouver is known for its livability and for its beautiful geography: it is on the Pacific Ocean and ringed by mountains. The city is also famous as a “foodie” city, hosting notable high-end restaurants as well as more casual fare.

Douglas College is connected to the downtown core of Vancouver by the Skytrain rapid transit system. The journey takes 25 minutes.

While the conference is in session, though not connected with it, the Vancouver Art Gallery will be hosting Art Spiegelman Co-Mix: A Retrospective of Comics, Graphics, and Scraps.

For further information or clarifications, please e-mail Graphixia2013@gmail.com.
 
To submit a proposal, complete the proposal form and submit not later than 15 January 2013.

This message was originally published by Peter Wilkins on the Comics Grid (4 October 2012).
http://www.comicsgrid.com/2012/10/graphixia-comicsgrid-conference-2013/

CFP: Superhero Synergies: Genre in the Age of Digital Convergence (collection; Nov. 1)

Call for Papers: Collection of Essays

"Superhero Synergies:

Genre in the Age of Digital Convergence"

Edited by

James Gilmore (UCLA) and Matthias Stork (UCLA)

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Since the late 1990s, the proliferation of digital media has opened up a seemingly infinite horizon of narrative possibilities in transmedia storytelling. Traditional ideas about the look and the texture of cinema, television, and comics have equally undergone striking revision in the age of digital convergence. New technologies--including 3-D, video on-demand, and electronic tablets--change the ways we think about media production, aesthetics, and consumption. Digital media have made popular culture a malleable entity to be modified continuously. As a result, popular media do not exist in isolation, but converge into complex multidimensional objects. The Internet further relays this multidimensionality via discussion forums, fan fiction, and video-based criticism.

Nowhere has this phenomenon been more persistent, more creative, or sparked more discussion than in the superhero genre. While the genre is home to many of the most financially successful films of the last 15 years, it has also developed life in video games, digital comics, Internet criticism, video essays, novelizations, television programs, and other forms of media. These media may speak to each other--as in a video game based on the film The Avengers which is, in turn, based on a series of Marvel comic books--or incorporate and critique forms of media--as when the television series Heroes consciously employs comic book aesthetics as a central narrative component. The superhero genre thus forms an ideal lynchpin to examine the contemporary landscape of popular media convergence.

The goal of this anthology is to explore the intricate relationship between superheroes and digital media in an era of convergence. Specifically, we encourage contributors to consider analytical, research-driven, and theoretical work that tackles the problems and possibilities of convergence culture as it relates to the experience and study of superheroes in the contemporary world of digital media. While the anthology incorporates a theoretical dimension, we predominantly seek submissions that emphasize the experience of superheroes and analysis of superhero images in this expanding and converging digital landscape.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• How do conceptions of “genre” and “narrative” change amidst the interaction of multiple digital media forms?
• Adaptation: How might superhero texts accent themselves as acts of adaptation? How do digital media and transmedia storytelling transform the notion of fidelity?
• Reception study: What opportunities do digital media present for spectators to interact with each other and the media texts, and what are the scope and shape of those fandom culture interactions (i.e. avatar creation, fan fiction, video essay criticism)?
• Textual/aesthetic analysis: How do the texts themselves--comics, films, video games, etc.--employ digital media and technology? In what ways do their aesthetics and structures communicate a converging digital landscape?
• Cultural studies: How do digital media inform the discourse of socio-cultural issues within the genre, its texts, and their reception? How might digital media convergence foster a more complex discourse of these social, cultural, or political issues central to the genre--or do they?
• Marketing aesthetics: How do the advertising strategies for individual texts take advantage of an array of new media technologies?
• Film criticism: How does contemporary criticism use digital media technology to analyze and chronicle the development of the superhero genre?
• Gender analysis: How are male and female bodies figured in the superhero genre, and how have those representations changed over time and across different forms of media?

Interested writers should submit a proposal of approximately 400-600 words. Each proposal should clearly state 1) the research question and/or theoretical goals of the essay, 2) the essay’s relationship to the anthology’s core issues, and 3) a potential bibliography. Please also include a brief CV. Accepted essays should plan to be approximately 6,000-7,000 words.

Deadline for proposals: November 1, 2012

Please send proposals to both contact e-mails:

• James Gilmore: james.n.gilmore@gmail.com
• Matthias Stork: mstork@ucla.edu

Publication timetable:

• November 1, 2012 – Deadline for Proposals
• December 15, 2012 – Notification of Acceptance Decisions
• April 15, 2013 – Chapter Drafts Due
• July 15, 2013 – Chapter Revisions Due
• August 30, 2013 – Final Revisions Due

Acceptance will be contingent upon the contributors' ability to meet these deadlines, and to deliver professional-quality work.

If you have any questions, please contact the editors.