Concourse: Comics Studies

Amazon

Showing posts with label Comics Studies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Comics Studies. Show all posts

Friday, January 12, 2024

CFP: Virtual International Conference on #Glitching #Comics -The #ComicsStudies Society








In her 2020 publication Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto, Legacy Russell explores the notion of “glitch-as-error with its genesis in the realm of the machinic and the digital.” With this framing, she argues that glitches might “inform the way we see the AFK [Away-From-Keyboard or real] world, shaping how we might participate in it toward greater agency for and by ourselves” (8-9). With her sights set on social systems of gender, race, and sexuality in particular, Russell asks how embodied subjects who defy patriarchal white supremacist cisheterosexist norms are positioned or appear as glitches, as errors, in digital and AFK spaces. Rather than take for granted the normative understanding of glitch-as-error, Russell argues for a feminist praxis that reconceives glitches as a form of refusal and a means by which to challenge the status quo. Russell is particularly interested in how artists record, perform, and embrace the glitch to expose our flawed social systems, explore the in-between, and “imagine new possibilities of what the body can do, and how this can work against the normative” (14). To read Russell’s work online or to hear her talking about glitch feminism see here: https://www.legacyrussell.com/GLITCHFEMINISM  



Building on Russell’s bold and necessary work, the CSS Conference Committee invites members to join us in glitching comics. What can errors in production processes of print comics reveal about systems of racialization? How might digital reading practices expose industry sexism or ableism? What do creators accomplish when they embrace glitchy aesthetics? How do comics or comics media that dwell in the in-between or sit with discomfort help us to refuse violent social norms? How do marginalized creators take advantage of systemic failures? 

Like Russell, we recognize the feedback loop between digital and AFK spaces so we encourage participants to draw on print or digital comics, comics-related media, or texts that actively blur these distinctions. The Comics Studies Society invites proposals for 15-minute individual papers, pre-formed panels, media objects (such as critical making, comics, video, Twine, or performance), and pedagogy or other workshops that engage with how comics (across forms, genres, media, experiences, regions, and cultures) disrupt the status quo. 




Topics may include but are by no means limited to: 

  • “Glitch Refuses”
    • Resistant narratives
    • Texts that defy genre distinctions
    • Subversive reading practices
  • “Glitch Throws Shade”
    • Errors that expose hegemonic social norms
    • Aesthetics that reveal the fallibility of normative ideals
    • Reactivity in fan communities
  • “Glitch is Error”
    • Comics that embrace the unknowable
    • Media that strive for elasticity
    • Historical errors that disrupted the status quo
  • “Glitch is Anti-body”
    • Disability in comics
    • Production processes that prioritize accessibility for disabled creators and readers
    • Representations of bodies that glitch “hegemonic normative formulations”
  • “Glitch is Virus”
    • Reception of or resistance to AI art in comics
    • The brokenness of labor standards in the comics industry
    • Infection or monstrosity as a “vehicle of resistance” to identity norms
  • “Glitch Mobilizes”
    • How digital platforms/modes of creation provide opportunity
    • The promise of “newly proposed worlds” in comics media 
    • Fan activism
  • “Glitch is Remix”
    • Retcon as a form of reclamation
    • The rearranging of creative traditions to generate something liberatory
    • Repurposing discomfort to reveal truths




We ask that you submit abstracts via the Google Forms below or on our website no later than 11:59pm Central Time (US) on February 16, 2024. All submissions will undergo transparent peer review. Notifications will go out and registration will open in March. The virtual conference will take place in June 23-26 2024.

Please contact the Conference Committee with any questions: comicsstudiesorg@gmail.com

Contact Information

The Comics Studies Society

comicsstudies.org / comicsstudiesorg@gmail.com

Contact Email
comicstudiesorg@gmail.com

Thursday, January 11, 2024

CFP: Virtual International Conference C4P - "Comprehending #Comics: Exploring Methodologies and Approaches to #ComicStudies in History and the Social Sciences": September 8-9, 2024

 Please submit your proposal by May 1, 2024

Interest in comic studies have generated wide and varied interests from an exploration of visual language and narrative in sequential art to the use of technologies in comics, to considerations current questions in both contemporary society and history. These have led to fruitful research which cross disciplines and produced diverse and complex scholarship. Richard Scully have written extensively on political cartoons and their relationship with imperialism and colonialism. Amy Matthewson’s Cartooning China examined the British popular satirical magazine Punch and situated the series of cartoons of China and Chinese people within their geopolitical frameworks. Sheena Howard and Ronald Jackson’s Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation brought together a range of critical essays exploring contributions of Black graphic artists. Collections such as Drawing the Past Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (2022), edited by Dorian Alexander, Michael Goodrum, and Philip Smith, brought a range of scholars to unite around the broad theme of the historical imagination in American popular media. 

There is still an evolving consensus on which the methodologies that scholars specialized in fields of history and social sciences could use when engaging with comics. Often, research focused on comics-formatted primary sources is pigeonholed into literary study, or in other cases the linguistic framework of describing and analyzing comics fails to translate to a discussion of material culture. As the range of demonstrated methodologies is vast, and as the advancement of comics-based research offers new potential for the study of history and the social sciences, it is a crucial time to reflect and take stock of current practice and possible future directions. 

We are interested in all aspects of comics-format works, comics and graphic novels, and methodologies and themes that might address (but are not limited to) the following:

  • Representation in comics
  • The challenges of comics-based research studies as applied to the study of history
  • Historical aspects of visualities and comics in particular
  • The future of comics in research
  • Archeology and comics
  • Ancient and medieval history in comics
  • The effects of digital tools in comic studies
  • Comics and the politics of methodology – race, gender, sexuality, class, etc.
  • The transnational, transcultural, and/or interdisciplinary nature of comic studies
  • Teaching history with or through comics
  • Teaching comics-based research methods
  • Comics in memory studies
  • Tensions and concordances between art history and history of comics and graphic novels

We are now accepting proposals for papers (20 minutes) and panels (of 2 or 3 papers). Graduate students are also invited to submit a poster, which will be displayed online for the duration of the conference. The poster section will enable asynchronous comments, and a presentation session where participants give a short 3-5 minute summary of the poster content. Please submit the following to comprehendingcomics@historyincomics.org or elizabethallyn.woock@upol.cz by May 1st 2024:
  • abstract of 300 words
  • a biography of 50 words including your name, email, affiliation, and gender pronouns

This will be an online conference hosted by the Comics Lab at Palacky University, Czech Republic. Online networking and socializing will be enabled through various platforms. Given the international spread of contributors, participant time zones will be considered when scheduling panels. The conference will take place September 8-9, 2024. 

 

Contact Information

Please submit the following to comprehendingcomics@historyincomics.org or elizabethallyn.woock@upol.cz by May 1st 2024:

  • abstract of 300 words
  • a biography of 50 words including your name, email, affiliation, and gender pronouns
Contact Email
comprehendingcomics@historyincomics.org