CFP: Comics & Graphic Narrative Circle / ALA (Jan. 29; May 26-29)

Call for Papers

Comics and Graphic Narrative Circle

American Literature Association

27^th Annual Conference: May 26-29, 2016

Hyatt Regency San Francisco

5 Embarcadero, San Francisco, CA

The Comics & Graphic Narrative Circle welcomes abstracts for presentation at two sessions on comics at the 2016 ALA conference in SanFrancisco.

Session One: Women in the Comics Industry

Although women have been part of the comics industry in the United States since its beginning, the last few years have seen a massive growth in popular and critically-acclaimed comics by women creators, along with increasing attention to female fans and the representation of women characters. The increased prominence of women comes as a direct challenge to the image of the white male nerd as the quintessential comics consumer, and to the preponderance of men in positions of power within the industry. We invite submissions dealing with any facet of women in the comics industry. In what ways have major comics corporations (Marvel, DC, Image) responded or failed to respond to questions of women’s representation at the level of characters and stories, or at the level of opportunities for writers, artists, and editors? In what ways have series such as Ms. Marvel, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, or Bitch Planet, imprints such as Boom! Box (publishers of Lumberjanes), or influential creators such as Kelly Sue DeConnick altered our understanding of the market for feminist comics? How have women shaped the comics industry as it now exists? What can we learn from the careers of women editors such as Karen Berger (who oversaw DC’s massively influential imprint Vertigo) or Francoise Mouly (who edited the avant garde comics anthology RAW and is now art editor for the New Yorker)? Do feminist stories require different artistic approaches at the level of story structure and style?

 

Session Two: Open Topic

We invite submissions on any topics regarding comics.

Please email an abstract (of no more than 350 words) and a brief biographical note to Ben Novotny Owen (owen.179@osu.edu) and David M. Ball (balld@dickinson.edu) no later than January 29^th.

CFP - Project: Comic Con, St. Louis MO (Aug. 31; Oct. 17-18)

Call for Papers, Presentations, and Panels

Project: Comic Con 

October 17-18, 2015 

St Louis, MO

Dear colleagues, scholars, and friends:

We invite submissions for proposed papers, presentations, and panel sessions related to comics and graphic narratives for inclusion within the academic mini-conference held in conjunction with Project: Comic Con, a locally organized, family friendly celebration of comics, cartoons, anime, and pop culture in St Louis, MO.

As this year’s theme is “Women in Comics,” we are especially interested in potential presentations, panels, workshops, or creative sessions that relate with or speak directly to the changing role of women in comics as characters, creators, and consumers. We also welcome proposals that deal specifically with works related to or produced by our anticipated roster of guests.

More information concerning the Project: Comic Con guest list, programming, and accommodations can be found here: http://www.projectcomiccon.com/

All accepted presenters receive a two-day pass to Project: Comic Con. All presentations are open to anyone with a pass.

As our conference is also meant to encourage popular discussion and debate, we encourage and prefer visually engaging and accessible presentations.

Please submit abstracts and proposals of no more than 300 words and a brief biographical statement no later than 31st August, 2015. Please send all materials as Word attachments to Daniel Yezbick at DYezbick@stlcc.edu.

We look forward to your proposals.

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: 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.

CFP: Female Superheroes and Media Cultures (Australia) (April 11; August 12-13)

TIGHTS AND TIARAS:

FEMALE SUPERHEROES AND MEDIA CULTURES

12-13 August 2011

Monash University, Melbourne

Sponsored by: The Centre for the Book, Monash University

In 2010, the 600th issue of Wonder Woman celebrated the Amazonian superhero’s longevity in print media. To mark the occasion, the issue reinvented the superhero’s iconic costume to make it less revealing, introducing dark trousers and a blue, starred jacket. This shift to more practical, less sexualised wear arguably reflects changing attitudes about gender and the growing female presence in the comics industry. Nonetheless, the change prompted some controversy online amongst fan communities, again highlighting the problematic history of the representation of women as powerful figures.

‘Tights and Tiaras: Female Superheroes and Media Cultures’ is a one and a half day interrogation of the construct of the ‘superhero’ as female and more generally of the representation of powerful female figures in fantasy and science fiction. Looking at a range of print and visual media, papers will explore the range of female characters in superhero narratives, the material history of the female superhero, and how visual and textual constructs of female heroes - and anti-heroes - have been re-imagined, re-invented and re-packaged over time.

Possible topics include:

• The representation of female superheroes in print and visual media – in comics, comix, graphic novels, novels, short stories, fan fiction, film, television, and other media forms
• Distribution of narratives and images of female superheroes across multiple genres and media platforms
• The female hero quest
• Deconstructing the superhero trope – studies in feminism, patriotism, politics, race, satire, comedy, and so on
• Constructs of the female supervillain
• Superhero fashions, including costumes, cosplay and sartorial signifiers
• Female collaboration in comics
• Female comics artists: historical and contemporary
• Female comics audiences and fan communities
• Analysis of the institutional, commercial and licensing histories of
• female superhero properties
• The construction of powerful women in fantasy and science fiction genres

Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words, accompanied by a brief bio, by emailed attachment to Dr Rebecca-Anne Do Rozario (Rebecca.DoRozario@monash.edu). The deadline for abstracts is 11 April, 2011.

Women's Manga Beyond Japan (21 – 23 February, 2011)

Women's Manga Beyond Japan:

Contemporary Comics as Cultural Crossroads in Asia

Date: 21 – 23 February, 2011

Venue: Seminar Room A & B, AS7,

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, National University of Singapore

Free Admission (Registration required)

CO-SPONSORS:

National University of Singapore (Japanese Studies Departure)

Japan Foundation

Women’s MANGA Research Project (Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) No. 21320044 “Research in Women's Manga: Subjectivity, Globalization, and the Possibilities for Expression”)

In the last two decades, manga has become a global medium, a transcultural phenomenon which has spread all over the world. There are many reasons why manga has generated such massive international interest. One can be found in the gender-related practices and discourses it gives rise to. Previously prevailing forms of comics, such as American and Franco-Belgian productions, were mainly targeted at male readers, while manga appeals to girls and women as well, both as creators and readers. Manga for girls and women occupy a particular position: the manga style become a favorite means of young women's expression worldwide, and women dominate the realm of fan creations recently; furthermore, girls' and women's comics contribute significantly to exploring gender and sexualities, not limited to heterosexual femininity.

Inviting John. A. Lent as a keynote speaker, a forerunner who has contributed to unite comics, comics artists, and comics scholars all over the world, and focusing on female artists and their works in Asia from both scholarly and artistic perspectives, we would like to examine the ongoing conceptualization of manga, which has perhaps proved more inspiring to female readers and authors than any previous form of comics anywhere in the world.

We hope our international and transcultural approach to women as subjects of sequential art and manga, a new style of visual narrative, will suggest likely points of common interest for various cultures and readers far beyond Japan. The symposium approaches “women's manga/comics” in an inter- as well as transcultural way in order to explore common scholarly interests related to sequential art in general and manga in particular.

Registration

To register, please email your name, dates/panels you would like to attend and contact details to: sheila.tang@nus.edu.sg.

CFP: Comics Forum Leeds Art Gallery (Aug 16; Nov 18-19)

Comics Forum

Leeds Art Gallery

18th and 19th November 2010

Women in Comics II

1030-1700, 18/11/2010

Following the success of ‘Women in Comics’ held at The University of Cambridge in 2009, and the significant support of both practitioners and academics, we are delighted to be holding a second ‘Women in Comics’ Conference.

The purpose of the conference is to provide analysis and insight into a field of culture that has traditionally been the domain of men. With an increasing number of female artists, writers, scholars and publishers of comics, this conference looks to celebrate women’s contribution to comics, and strengthen and investigate feminine perspectives within and surrounding comic art and narrative.

What are women creating within comics? How is female readership changing and evolving? What is the interface between women in comics and gender studies?

Our guest speaker is comic artist Suzy Varty who published the very first all-woman comic book in the UK in 1977.

Possible topics include but are not limited to:

• Feminism and personal politics in comics
• super-heroines
• biographical and autobiographical comics
• female comics authors/artists in history
• manga
• female characters
• women in the alternative press
• women in the comics industry

Suggestions for panels or individual presentations of 15 minutes are encouraged, and all genders are welcome to submit. Abstracts of 300 words should be submitted along with a short biography (100 words max.) to: Rikke Platz Cortsen rpc@hum.ku.dk and Catriona MacLeod c.macleod.1@research.gla.ac.uk. Please include the words ‘Women in Comics’ in your subject heading. Deadline for submissions is 16/8/2010.

Any general emails about the conference please email: Sarah Lightman s.lightman.1@research.gla.ac.uk

Theory and Practice:

A Conference on Comics

1030-1700, 19/11/2010

There are strong ties between the production and scholarship of comics, from the seminal works of Will Eisner in Comics and Sequential Art and Scott McCloud in Understanding Comics to the theoretically informed comics of Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan), Dan Clowes (Ghost World) and Seth (Wimbledon Green), among others. ‘Theory and Practice: A Conference on Comics’ will seek to investigate those ties, considering how comics both influence and are influenced by theoretical discourses of communication, aesthetics and narrative.

Subjects for discussion might include (but are not limited to):

• The lives and works of comic creators who also theorise the form (or vice versa), e.g. Rodolphe Töpffer, Harry Morgan, Scott McCloud, Will Eisner, Benoît Peeters etc.
• The roles played by theoretical discourse in the production of comics, or by the act of producing comics in the understanding of theory
• The value of theory for practice and/or practice for theory in the field of comics
• Understandings of comics that address the relative positions of the reader, the author, the artist etc. e.g. Philippe Marion’s discussion of the graphiateur
• The concepts of breakdown and closure
• Methodologies
• The rise of practice-based research and its implications and/or applications for Comics Studies

Proposals of 250 words are invited for talks of 15-20 minutes in length, and should be emailed, along with a short biography (around 100 words) to Ian Hague (Department of History, University of Chichester) at I.Hague@chi.ac.uk.

CFP: Women of Color in Popular Culture (July 1)

[Courtesy of Cory Creekmur on the Comics Scholars List.]

Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts
Department of American Studies
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
University of Iowa
May 20, 2008

CALL FOR PROPOSALS:
Essays or Book Chapters on
Women of Color in Popular Culture

JUNIOR FACULTY PUBLICATION WORKSHOP
Thurs. Sept. 18-Sat. Sept. 20, 2008
University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA

The CENTER FOR ETHNIC STUDIES AND THE ARTS (CESA), University of Iowa, seeks proposals for participating in a two and a half day workshop for junior tenure-track faculty on their research-in-progress on "Women of Color in Popular Culture."€ Workshop participants are also CESA Junior Fellows for Fall Semester 2008 and are part of a collaborative network of scholars.

Topics may include but are not restricted to:

• issues of representation regarding gender, race, ethnicity, class, and sexualities in any form of popular culture, including literature, music,photography, film and television, comic books, art, dance and performance,technoculture and cyberspace
• women of color as creative producers and expressive artists
• body politics and women of color
• feminist or womanist approaches to race and popular culture
• stardom and celebrity
• race, gender, and American popular culture in U.S. and transnational contexts
• female and racialized audiences, reception, and popular culture

The workshop will consist of: sessions and written feedback on individual drafts: style tips; networking with faculty from many colleges and universities; information about publication and fellowship application strategies.

Participants are expected to participate in sessions from Thursday afternoon Sept. 18 through Saturday afternoon Sept. 20. Preference will be given to faculty from CIC-member or Midwestern universities and colleges. For out-of-town participants, travel and lodging expenses will be reimbursed up to $700.

This workshop is part of CESA'€™s 2008-2011 Arts in Everyday Life Initiative. CESA recognizes that art and creative expression are integrated components of religion, ritual, everyday life, and other cultural practices of minority communities. The Center seeks and encourages multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary approaches to studying these practices as well as to the ways that ethnicity and popular culture shape U.S. national and international issues and cultures. It seeks critical histories as well as contemporary ones.

TO APPLY:
All participants must be Assistant Professors with a tenure-track faculty position (effective September 1, 2008) and must submit a draft of approximately 7-15 pages of the article or book chapter being proposed for workshop development. Only work that has not yet been published is eligible. Please send: a letter of interest that includes an abstract of your submission, a CV no longer than 4 pages, and workshop paper draft to: cesa [at] uiowa.edu. Please send materials electronically as attachments to your e-mail letter of interest.

DEADLINE: JULY 1, 2008. Participants will be notified by AUGUST 1, 2008.

For questions and further information, please contact: Professor Lauren Rabinovitz, Director, Center for Ethnic Studies and the Arts; (319) 384-3490; Lauren-rabinovitz [at] uiowa.edu or cesa[at] uiowa.edu.