Conferences

Roundtable discussion (online): “Birgit Weyhe’s ‘Rude Girl’: Comics, Blackness, and Translation Dialogue”

Termin:
2023 10 06 04:00pm Ortszeit (22:00h CET) - 2023 10 06

nullNext Friday, ComFor member Elizabeth ‘Biz’ Nijdam is organizing and chairing a panel discussion at the Goethe-Institut Montreal for the German Studies Association’s Comic Studies Network with comic artist Birgit Weyhe and Dr. Priscilla Layne (UNC-Chapel Hill) about their recent collaboration on Rude Girl (2022). Involved are also the UBC Comic Studies Cluster and the Department of Classics, Modern Languages, and Linguistics at Concordia University. For those interested, online registration and participation is possible.

More information:
“In 2018, Birgit Weyhe joined a room of German comics scholars at a GSA (German Studies Association) panel on diversity and inclusion in German-language comics to bear witness to a presentation by Dr. Brett Sterling that openly criticized her graphic novel Madgermanes (2016) for its representation of Blackness and cultural appropriation. While this commentary was far from welcome, it marked the start of the author’s journey in revaluating her power and privilege as a comics artist. Soon thereafter, Weyhe met Dr. Priscilla Layne, an Associate Professor of German Weyhe und Layne in MontrealStudies at UNC-Chapel Hill with Caribbean roots. Over the course of the next few years, Weyhe and Layne collaborated on the graphic novel Rude Girl (2022), which explore Layne’s life growing up in Chicago, experience of racism, and path to German studies, all the while interrogating what it means for a White artist to represent Black lives.

This panel will take the form of a conversation with the co-creators of Rude Girl, discussing Layne and Weyhe’s collaboration and the role of comics in intersectional explorations of Black identity.”

Go to the registration site

Conference “Comics, the Children and Childishness”

Termin:
2023 09 18 - 2023 09 19

On September 18/19, 2023, the conference “Comics, the Children and Childishness”, will take place in presence at KASK. It is one of the culminating outputs of the ERC project “Children in Comics: An Intercultural History (1865-)”, led by Prof. Maaheen Ahmed at Ghent University. The project aims to reconstruct a cultural history of European comics, particularly focusing on comics from Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Italy.

The conference is organized by Maaheen Ahmed und ComFor-member Giorgio Busi Rizzi (Ghent University). It aims to further deepen the interests and achievements of the ERC project, with the goal of opening a crucial forum for dialogue between European and international researchers, focusing on a distinctly international corpus, covering comics not only from the dominant areas of Western Europe and North America, but also from Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. In this way, the conference aims to inspire further research in this neglected but crucial aspect of comics studies.

The complete program can be found here. Among the contributors are also other ComFor members besides Rizzi (Benoît Crucifix, Jaqueline Berndt, Eva Van der Wiele). Those interested in attending the conference can register here. Please address any questions to comics@ugent.be.

Program of the ComFor Annual Conference 2021: “Coherence in Comics”

Termin:
2021 10 14 - 2021 10 16

The ComFor web editorial team is back from its summer break with an announcement on its own behalf: the 16th annual conference of the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) will take place from 14-16 October 2021!

Announcement:

The 16th Annual Conference of the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) approaches the topic “Coherence in Comics” from an interdisciplinary perspective. We seek to not only negotiate and explain meaning-making across panel borders and semiotic modes, but also across disciplines, seeking commonalities, shared interests and points of contact. […] We are looking forward to keynotes by Janina Wildfeuer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Information Studies at the University of Groningen, Barbara Postema, author of Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments, and Charles Forceville, Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam (Department of Media Studies). Apart from the conference’s central focus on coherence, ComFor aims to promote interdisciplinary cooperation and dialogue across all areas of comics research. The 16th Annual Conference will therefore continue the tradition of an open workshop format that allows researchers to present and gather feedback on various projects within comics studies, without any thematic restrictions. We are also excited to announce a comic reading (in German) by Vina Yun as part of this year’s program, arranged by the Austrian Comics Society (OeGeC – Österreichische Gesellschaft für Comic-Forschung und -Vermittlung).

Registration:

The conference will be held online via WebEx; there is no conference fee; registration by email to comfor2021@sbg.ac.at is requested.


Organisators:

  • Elisabeth Krieber (Universität Salzburg)
  • Markus Oppolzer (Universität Salzburg)
  • Hartmut Stöckl (Universität Salzburg)

Programme:

Thursday, 14 Oct., 2021
10:30 – 11:30 – Members’ Meeting of the Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) (in German)
11:30 – 13:00 – Lunch Break

13:00 – 13:15 – Conference Opening

13:15 – 14:15 – OPEN FORUM I

Mihaela Precup and Dragoș Manea – “The Overfamiliar Perpetrator: Hipster Hitler, Transcultural Memory, and the Banalisation of Genocide”
Pedro Réquio – “Revolutionary Comics/Revolutionary Politics: Portugal in the 1970’s”

14:15 – 14:45 – Break

14:45 – 15:45 – OPEN FORUM II
Ahlam Almohissen – “Multimodal Humour in Cartoons: Social Semiotic Perspective”
Xiaolan Wei – “Coherence Constructed through Comics and Spoken Language in Chinese College Students’ Five Minutes English Academic Speech”

15:45 – 16:15 – Break

16:15 – 17:30 – KEYNOTE Janina Wildfeuer
“Demystifying the Magic. A Multimodal Linguistic Approach to Coherence in Visual Narratives”

17:30– 18:00 – Break

18:00 – 19:00 – AWARD CEREMONY
Martin-Schüwer-Publication Prize 2021 for Excellence in Comic Studies


Friday, 15 Oct., 2021
09:00 – 10:30 – PANEL 1: FORMS AND AESTHETICS OF COHERENCE (Panel Chair: Stephan Packard)

Elisabeth El Refaie – “A Tripartite Classification of Visual Metaphor as a Basis for Studying Coherence in Comics”
Martin Foret – “‘Like a Speech’ or Searching for Coherence between Codes Used in Comics: The Interplay of Various Codes within the Specific Complex Code (or Better Meta-Code) of Comics”
Lukas R.A.Wilde – “Essayistic Comics: Non-narrative Coherence and Pictogrammatics with Schlogger, Sousanis, Barry”

10:30 – 11:00 – Break

11:00 – 12:30 – PANEL 2: COHESION IN COMICS: MULTIMODAL AND PRAGMATICIST APPROACHES (Panel Chair: Janina Wildfeuer)

Chiao-I Tseng – “Structures of Cohesion in Comics”
John Bateman – “Nonlinear Coherence? Steps Beyond the Sequence in Sequential Art”
Stephan Packard  – “Cohesion in Panel Graphs: A Psychosemiotic Approach”

12:30 – 14:00 – Lunch Break

14:00 – 15:30  – PANEL 3: IN(COHERENT) SPACES AND NARRATORS (Panel Chair: Mihaela Precup)
Barbara Margarethe Eggert  – “Comics as Coherence Machines? Exemplary Observations on the Functional Spectrum of Museum Comics”
Martha Kuhlman -“Comics and the Miniature: Thinking Inside the Box”
Elizabeth Allyn Woock – “The Graphic ‘I’ in Academic Comics”

15:30 – 16:00 – Break

16:00 – 17:15 – KEYNOTE: Charles Forceville: “Visual and Multimodal (Meta)Representation of Speech, Thought, and Sensory Perception in Comics”

17:15 – 17:30  – Break

17:30 – 19:00 – COMIC READING (in German)
presented by the Austrian Comics Society (OeGeC Österreichische Gesellschaft für Comic-Forschung und -Vermittlung)
Vina Yun: Homestories


Saturday, 16 Oct., 2021
09:00 – 11:00  – PANEL 4: Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to the Visual Language of Comics (Panel Chair: Neil Cohn)

Neil Cohn – “Grammar of the Visual Language of Comics”
Irmak Hacımusaoğlu  – “What Are Motion Lines Anyways?”
Bien Klomberg – “Calvin the Elephant: Resolving Discontinuity through Conceptual Blends”
Lenneke Lichtenberg  – “Understanding Lightbulb Moments in Comics: The Processing of Visual Metaphors that Float above Characters’ Heads”

11:00 – 11:30 – Break
11:30 – 12:45 – KEYNOTE Barbara Postema – “Narrative Structure in Wordless Comics”

12:45 – 14:30 – Lunch Break

14:30 – 16:00 – PANEL 5: FRACTURED BODIES AND IDENTITIES (Panel Chair: Barbara Margarete Eggert)

Tina Helbig  – “Frames as Skin and Comic Book Pages as a Fractured Bodies in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman and in Emily Carroll’s Short Horror Comics”
Carolina González Alvarado  – “A Perverse Beauty and the Mechanisms of Control over the Body: An Analysis of Helter Skelter by Kyoho Okazaki”
Rita Maricocchi – “(In)coherencies in the Manifestations of German Identity in Birgit Weyhe’s Madgermanes”

16:00 – 16:30 – Break

16:30 – 18:00 – PANEL 6: COHERENCE IN SUPERHERO NARRATIVES: THE CHALLENGES OF SERIALIZATION AND WORLD-BUILDING (Panel Chair: Lukas R.A. Wilde)
Mark Hibbett – “Image Quotation of Past Events to Enforce Storyworld Cohesion in John Byrne’s Fantastic Four”
Amadeo Gandolfo  – “Do the Collapse: Final Crisis and the Impossible Coherence of the Superhero Crossover”
Scott Jordan and Victor Dandridge Jr. – “Invincible: The Many Shapes, Forms, and Sizes of Coherence through Comics”

18:00 – 18:15 – Conference Closing


Further information and a detailed programme can be found on Event website.

Comics|Histories – International Conference

Termin:
2021 07 16 - 2021 07 17

The international Conference “Comics|Histories” is organised by ComFor members Jaqueline Berndt (Stockholm University, Sweden), Felix Giesa (Goethe University
Frankfurt, Germany) and Christina Meyer (TU Braunschweig, Germany).

Description of the conference by the organisers:

“Comics Studies are on the rise, but the bulk of comics research prioritizes contemporary productions, whereas comics’ histories and genealogies, or preconditions of what appears as comics and  the forms of graphic narratives today, remain understudied. To fill the gap and to map as yet unknown territories, a new book series will be launched soon by academic publisher Rombach Wissenschaft, and this conference, organized by the series editors, is intended as a kick-off event. The book series and conference aim to revise the wide spectrum of what is now regarded as comics (including caricature, cartoons, graphic novel, etc.), broadening the view of Comics Studies not only retrospectively, but also prospectively at a moment in time when modern media identities are dissolving.

We welcome in particular contributions that engage with both theories and methods employed in Comics Studies so far, and crucial disciplinary concerns of history (as specified in literary, cultural, media, or art history, and so on). While there is already a significant amount of publications that foreground representations history in comics, our conference seeks to highlight comics-specific contributions to history. In addition to that, we invite papers that address comics from a transnational while culturally situated, perspective, without privileging national histories of the medium in the narrower sense, i.e., as confined to North American, Franco-Belgian, or Japanese publication markets. Last but not least, we call for papers that put the spotlight on the historiography of Comics Studies, in other words, the inter- and transdisciplinary research on comics as an object of analysis in itself. Multidisciplinary assessments of the field and its practices of research and publishing, authorand editorship promise new insight into processes of knowledge formation, as well as the power relations involved.”

Registration is open until July 15th via comicshistories@uni-frankfurt.de.

The conference takes place online via ZOOM from July 16th to July 17th; the ZOOM link will be sent out to registered participants.

Schedule for the Annual ComFor Conference 2020: „Comics & Agency“

Termin:
2020 10 08 - 2020 10 10

15th Annual Conference of the German Society for Comic Studies:

Comics & Agency: Actors, Publics, Participation

Online | Live via Zoom

Registration:

There is no conference fee, but in order to participate you will need to register by sending an email to comfor@comicgesellschaft.de no later than 5 October 2020.

Organisers:

Vanessa Ossa (University of Cologne)
Jan-Noël Thon (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Lukas R. A. Wilde (University of Tuebingen)

Schedule:
Thursday, 8 October 2020
13:30 CEST Welcome and Introduction: Christina Meyer (Free University Berlin), Vanessa Ossa (University of Cologne), Jan-Noël Thon
(Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Lukas R. A. Wilde (University of Tuebingen)
Panel 1: Digital Agency
14:00 CEST
  • Nicolle Lamerichs (HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht):
    Comics Interfaces: Digital Innovation and Fandom on Webtoon
  • Giorgio Busi Rizzi (Ghent University):
    Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Readers? Digital Comics Enhancing and Undermining the Agency of Their Users
  • Hans-Joachim Backe (IT University of Copenhagen):
    Who Controls the Speech Bubbles? Refl ecting on Agency in Comic-Games
15:30 CEST Coffee Break
Panel 2: Intermedial Agency
16:00 CEST
  • Manuel Herrero-Puertas (National Taiwan University):
    “Unconquerable and Simple”: Whitman, Democracy, Comics
  • Greice Schneider (Universidade Federal de Sergipe):
    Telling Stories with Photo-Archives: Narrativizing Visual Archives through Documentary Comics
  • Jared Gardner (The Ohio State University):
    Playing Comics, Reading Games
17:30 CEST Coffee Break
Keynote 1
18:00 CEST Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California):
Comics and Stuff
Award Ceremony: Martin-Schüwer-Preis 2020
20:00 CEST Dorothee Marx (University of Kiel), Daniel Stein (University of Siegen), and the Winner of the Martin-Schüwer-Preis

 

Friday, 9 October 2020
Panel 3: Authorial Agency
11:30 CEST
  • Georges Felten (University of Zurich):
    Moving Pictures: “Anti-Authorial” Dynamics in Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz
  • Laura Glötter (Heidelberg University):
    Comics Artist versus Artistic Genius: Authorship and Metafi ction in Fiske’s and Kverneland’s Kanon
  • Jörn Ahrens (University of Giessen):
    Ada in the Jungle and Aya in Yop City: Doing Gender and Doing Africa
13:00
CEST
Lunch Break
Panel 4: Editorial Agency
14:00 CEST
  • Jaqueline Berndt (Stockholm University): Distributive Agents Coming to the Fore: The Manga Editor in Recent Media Texts
  • Barbara Eggert (University of Art and Design Linz):
    Distribution and Publication as Topics in Autobiographical Graphic Novels and Comics Anthologies
  • Jessica Burton (University of Luxembourg):
    Tintin’s Global Journey: Invisible Actors behind a Europeanisation of the Comics Industry in the 1960s
15:30 CEST Coffee Break
Panel 5: Distributional Agency
16:00 CEST
  • Shawna Kidman (University of California San Diego):
    Licensing and Licensors as Agents of Change in US Comic Book Publishing
  • Romain Becker (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon):
    How Reprodukt Creates Series
  • Ian Horton (University of the Arts London) and John Miers (Kingston University London):
    Issues of Agency when Archiving and Displaying Mini-Comics from the Les Coleman Collection
17:30 CEST Coffee Break
Keynote 2
18:00 CEST Mel Gibson (Northumbria University):
Librarians, Agency, Young People, and Comics: Graphic Account and the Development of Graphic Novel Collections in Public Libraries in Britain in the 1990s
Virtual Comic Museum Erlangen
20:00 CEST Lisa Neun and Ralf Marczinczik

 

Saturday, 10 October 2020
Open Forum
11:30 CEST
  • Cathérine Lehnerer (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna):
    Comic Workshops: New Ways to Shape Participation in Education
  • Janina Wildfeuer, Ielka van der Sluis, and Gisela Redeker (University of Groningen):
    No Laughing Matter? Analyzing Instructional First-Aid Comics
  • Mark Hibbett (University of the Arts London):
    Toward a Tool for Measuring Transmedia Character Coherence
13:00
CEST
Lunch Break
Panel 7: Fan Agency (Part I)
14:00 CEST
  • Benjamin Woo (Carleton University):
    The Self-Commodifi cation of Comics Fandoms: From “Active” to “Agentic” Audiences?
  • Matthew J. Smith (Radford University):
    Pilgrimage to Hall H: Fan Agency at Comic-Con
  • Suzanne Scott (University of Texas at Austin):
    Towards an Aesthetics of Noncompliance: Comics Iconography and Fan Tattoos
15:30 CEST Coffee Break
Panel 8: Fan Agency (Part II)
16:00 CEST
  • Safiyya Hosein (Ryerson University/York University):
    Muslim Manga: Fandom Discourses and Issues of Cultural Participation
  • Anke Marie Bock and Ashumi Shah (University of Augsburg):
    Death of the Endless and Fan Projections
  • Christopher Pizzino (University of Georgia):
    Comics and the Omnipotent Reader: The Body of Richard C. Meyer
17:30 CEST Coffee Break
Concluding Discussion: Where Do We Go from Here?
18:00 CEST Vanessa Ossa (University of Cologne), Jan-Noël Thon (Norwegian University of Science and Technology),
Lukas R. A. Wilde (University of Tuebingen)

 

Download schedule as PDF file.

Workshop “Practices of Reading Comics” in Berlin

The Cinepoetics – Center for Advanced Film
Studies and the Committee for Comics Studies
(AG Comicforschung) of the German Society for Media Studies (GfM) are inviting to their workshop “
Approaching the Practices of Reading Comics: Perspectives from Phenomenology and Interface Studies”

Date: 29th/30th of November 2019 (Friday/Saturday)
Location: Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe Cinepoetics,
Grunewaldstr. 35, 12165 Berlin

Participants are kindly asked to register with bjoern.hochschild@fu-berlin.de or lukas.wilde@uni-tuebingen.de.

Program:

Friday, November 29:

10:00 Welcome and Introduction
10:45 Phenomenological Approaches (Simon Grennan)
12:30 Lunch Break
13:30 Analytical Discussion: Jordan Wellington Lint with Brief Approaches to Analysis (Björn Hochschild)
14:45 Short Break
15:00 Kafka’s Narratives Intertwined: First Data of a Qualitative-empirical Study with Students of Higher Classes (Caroline Bader)
15:45 The De-Digitalization of Manga for Non-Japanese Audiences: Research Problems and Questions of Methods
(Natalia Samutina)
15:30 Conclusion

Saturday, November 30:

10:00 Welcome
10:15 Interface-Studies – An Overview (Christoph Ernst)
12:00 Lunch Break
13:00 Analytical Discussion: These Memories Won’t Last with Brief Approaches to Analysis (Lukas R.A. Wilde)
14:15 Short Break
14:30 »Made of pure internet«: Metamedial Engagement and Technostalgia in Homestuck (Tim Glaser)
15:15 Conclusion

Description: Continue reading

„COMICS/POLITICS“-Conference in Toronto

Termin:
2019 07 25 - 2019 07 27

From July 25 to 27, the 2nd Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society (CSS) will take place at Ryerson University in Toronto/Canada. We are happy to announce that there are several members of the German Society for Comic Studies (ComFor) and the AG Comicforschung among the contributors (see below).

This year‘s topic will be „COMICS/POLITICS“ and co-chairs Candida Rifkind and Andrew O’Malley have compiled a schedule consisting of academic presentations, roundtables, workshops, and an extensive cultural program. Special mention should also be made of the international campaign #womenonpanels, which advocates a better representation of women and people of marginalized gender identities in the field of comics studies. #womenonpanels successfully raised funds for two travel grants for female-identified or non-binary emerging scholars.

Selected presentations:

  • Daniela Kaufmann (Independent Scholar, German Society for Comic Studies): ”‘A Study in Black and White’ – Color Change and Gender Fluidity in George Herriman’s Krazy Kat” (27. 7., Panel “In/Visible Race and American Comics”; 11:30-12:45)
  • Biz Nijdam (University of British Columbia):
    • “Preserving the Preservation of the Past: Comics in Archives and Archives in Comics” (25. 7., Roundtable „Archival Anxieties“; 11:30-12:45)
    • “Embodying feminism: Anke Feuchtenberger’s comics at the intersection of art and methodology“ (27. 7., Roundtable „A Multidisciplinary Investigation of Feminist Comic Art in the Baltic Sea Region“; 14:00-15:45)
  • Marina Rauchenbacher (University of Vienna): “Bringing Viewpoints to Mind: German-language Comics on Flight and Migration.” (26. 7., Panel „Border Crossings“; 11:30-12:45)
  • Katharina Serles (University of Vienna): „‚Nothing Left Out‘? Canonical Images and The Politics of Cosmogony-Comics.“ (26. 7., Panel „Religion and Comics“; 14:00-15:15)
  • Véronique Sina (Cologne University): “’I am not these feet’: Representations of the ‘dis/abled’ body in Kaisa Leka’s autobiographical comic” (26. 7., Panel “Auto/biography and the Embodied Self”, 15:30-16:45)

Please find the detailed program here: http://comicssociety.org/conference/program/

Workshop “(Self-)Documentation, (Self-)Performance and (Self-)Constitution of Gendered Cultural Identities in Comics and Literature”

Termin:
2019 01 24 14:00-18:30

On January 24th, 2019, and as part of the graduate research training group on “Documentary Practices: Excess and Privation” at the Ruhr University of Bochum, the workshop (Self-)Documentation, (Self-)Performance and (Self-)Constitution of Gendered Cultural Identities in Comics and Literature will take place.
The event – organized by Esra Canpalat and ComFor-Vice President Véronique Sina – will include a drawing workshop as well as impulses and discussions with comics artist Sarah Lightman and Béatrice Hendrich, Junior Professor at the Department of Oriental Studies at the University of Cologne.

Abstract:
„Assuming that visual and literary representations should always be looked at in context of their cultural and socio-political background, the interdisciplinary workshop aims at analysing (auto-)biographical comics of Jewish artists and literary works by Turkish writers. By focusing on different kind of identity policies that are being evoked in textual/visual media, the workshop will shed light on the question how (self-)documentation, (self-)performance and (self-)constitution of gendered cultural identities are being inscribed in (auto-)biographical comics and Turkish literature and culture. Bringing together the drawn line and the written word, an emphasis will be placed on the question how gendered cultural identities are being constructed, documented and negotiated within different media constellations. By doing so, the workshop will examine various conceptions of identity and their (de-)construction in comics and literary texts, paying specific attention to mechanisms of hegemonic exclusion(s) as well as manifestations of heteronormative structures and allocations in both media.“

Registration: Please register via das-dokumentarische@rub.de until December 21st.

Programme

Panel “Disregarded Gaps” at the 1st CSS-Conference in Illinois

Termin:
2018 08 09 University of Illinois, Urbana und Champaign, Illinois, USA - 2018 08 11

The first annual conference of the Comics Studies Society (CSS) will take place from 9 to 11 August 2018 under the motto “MIND THE GAPS! The Futures of the Field”. There will be a panel of the Comic Studies Working Group (AG Comicforschung) of the German Society for Media Studies (GfM) with German comic scholars. The panel, organized by ComFor-member Björn Hochschild, brings together three contributions on “Disregarded Gaps, Blanks, and Discontinuities in the Comics Reading Experience”.

Panel-Contributions & Abstracts:

(1) “Towards a Phenomenology of Comics: Conceptualizing Discontinuities as Movement” – Björn Hochschild (Berlin)

“Phenomenological conceptions of perception have developed into their own theoretical field when researching the aesthetic experience of films. Comic studies, however, have thus far shown little interest in phenomenology. Focusing on movement, my talk demonstrates how phenomenology can offer fruitful perspectives for studying the reading experience of comics.
Mostly seen as a still medium, comics are often defined by the contiguity of images, the juxtaposition of word and image, or discontinuities between panels and the gaps between them. Thus far, concepts of movement seem to focus either on the representation of movement – through gestural lines, body poses, etc. – or, more recently, on movement in eye tracking studies. I would like to propose a more general concept of movement for studying reader’s experiences by drawing on Maurice Merleau-Pontys “Phenomenology of Perception”. His work served as the foundation for film-phenomenology, starting with Vivian Sobchack’s “Address of the Eye”. However, in the light of the moving image, it was mostly read as a concept of perceiving movement. By arguing that Merleau-Pontys work is also a theory on movement in perception, I will propose ways to critically adapt his and Sobchack’s ideas for comic studies. My presentation will use an analysis of Chris Wares “Jordan Wellington Lint to show why and how gaps, ruptures and discontinuities in reading experiences can and should be understood though a phenomenological concept of movement.”

(2) “Musclemen, Toys, and Career Opportunities: Advertisements and the Reading Experience in 1970s Marvel Superhero Comics” – Felix Brinker (Hannover)

“While the study of other paratextual elements (like editorials and letters pages) has enriched our understanding of comic books, the role of advertisements within the reading process has not yet received a similar degree of scholarly attention. Only marginally present in today’s comic books, advertisements were omnipresent during the 1970s, when a typical 36 pages-long issue might have included up to 16 pages of advertising content. Focusing on Marvel superhero titles released between 1971 and 1979, my paper considers the placement, form, and content of various types of ads and argues that their navigation constitutes an integral part of the reading experience. Due to its placement throughout the comic book, advertising from the period tended to interrupt the flow of narrative content, forcing readers to glance at, scan across, or flip over wanted and unwanted commercial messages. Many ads furthermore established a close affinity to the accompanying narrative by echoing the themes of superhero comics or including multi-modal arrangements of words and images. Accordingly, the paper suggests that these advertisements call up similar reading protocols as the comics narratives that accompany them, which are already defined by a contiguity and juxtaposition of different codes and signifying elements. Ultimately, the paper suggests that the strong presence of ads turned the 70s comic book into a multi-purpose medium that, aside from carrying narrative content and providing a forum for a public exchange between producers and consumers, also served as a mail-order catalogue for a variety of different (and often explicitly fan-oriented) products.”

(3) “Blanks as a materialization of forgetting in Emmanuel Guibert’s La Guerre d’Alan – Bettina Egger (Salzburg)

“Comics, and more particularly autobiographical writing in comics, have been widely discussed as a medium which materializes memory in a specific and multilayered way. My talk offers a fresh perspective and focuses on comics as a medium of forgetting, by considering the example of La Guerre d’Alan by the French comics artist Emmanuel Guibert. To do so, I will examine the role of the blanks to show how the comic negotiates the idea of forgetting – as opposed to remembering – on a graphic level. My talk focuses on the role of blanks within panels, rarely considered in existing comic studies work. I will examine such white, left-out spaces and framing techniques by connecting Aleida Assmann’s theories about cultural memory and forgetting to Hillary Chute’s discussion of embodiment in comics. By showing several examples from La Guerre d’Alan I want to analyse the idea of forgetting in Guibert’s comics. My talk will demonstrate how a metadiscourse is produced on the graphic level, which questions the life narrative given by the verbal track of the comic. In this way, La Guerre d’Alan appears as a comic which stages processes of remembering/forgetting through the interplay of the visible and the invisible and puts them up for discussion through the mutual questioning of the verbal and the visual.”

To the Conference-page

Workshop “Comics Annotation” in Potsdam

Termin:
2018 06 18 - 2018 06 19

On June 18–19, 2018, the Early-Career Research Group ‘Hybrid Narrativity’ will host a “Workshop on Comics Annotation: Designing Common Frameworks for Empirical Research”.

Organizers’ Announcement:

“This workshop will bring together scholars in the field of empirical comics research to define common standards and ensure interoperability between disciplines. Researchers interested in comics are increasingly discovering annotation as a necessary and highly beneficial way of digitally enriching their object of study and moving towards data-driven scholarship. For this purpose, a number of tools and data formats have been adopted in areas as diverse as literary and media studies, art history and linguistics, cognitive and computer science. While this diversity represents the outcome of different requirements and backgrounds, a lack of coordination may also make it difficult or even impossible to share data and compare results. The workshop aims to establish common frameworks for future research and answer the following questions:

• What standards do we need to define to ensure interoperability between different researchers and approaches?
• How can annotation schemes be developed and adapted for the visual aspects of artefacts such as comics?
• How can integration be achieved between text-oriented standards, such as TEI and CBML, and further non-text-oriented schemes?
• Where, and to what extent, do we need to move beyond, or in parallel to, XML to support empirical studies more broadly, taking in data on eyetracking, EEG, reading order, physiological responses, etc.?

Participants: John Bateman, Neil Cohn, Jeremy Douglass, Alexander Dunst, Jochen Laubrock, Frederik Schlupkothen, John Walsh…”

Organizer’s Website