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Conference report “Mediality and Materiality of Contemporary Comics”

ZfM_LogoFrom April 24th to 26th 2015 the University of Tübingen hosted the 2nd Workshop of the AG Comicforschung (Comic Studies Board) of the Gesellschaft für Medienwissenschaft GfM (the German Society for Media Studies) under the header “The Mediality and Materiality of Contemporary Comics”. Keynote-speakers Daniel Merlin Goodbrey (Hertfordshire), Ian Hague (Comics Forum), Karin Kukkonen (Turku), Véronique Sina (Bochum) and Daniel Stein (Siegen), as well as 10 additional presenters, discussed how this relationship has changed in the context of digitalization and an increasingly convergent media culture. A detailed conference report , written by Christian A. Bachmann and Stephan Packard , is now available at Zeitschrift für Medienwissenschaft (ZfM) , the online journal of the GfM.

-> Conference report.

German Ministry of Education funds Research Group at the University of Paderborn

Hybride Narrativität_FördererSince April 2015, a new research group at the University of Paderborn, called “Hybrid Narrativity,” deals with graphic literature. It is a collaborative project between the Universities of Paderborn and Potsdam, which last four years and has been funded by the German Ministry of Education with 1,9 million Euros. The defined goal of the research group is to investigate the cultural specificity and reading comprehension of so-called “graphic novels.” (Source: idw)

Project description:

“Combining methods drawn from the cognitive sciences and digital humanities with narratology and literary history, our research group aims at a richer and empirically robust understanding of graphic literature and, in particular, the genre of the graphic novel. The group brings together scholars from psychology, computer science, as well as literary and cultural studies to contribute to the establishment of empirical methods in the humanities. The main research goals of the project are: 1) the creation of an XML-language that allows for the annotation of all relevant textual and visual aspects of graphic narrative, including an editor with state-of-the-art image-processing features and a representative database of contemporary graphic novels; (2) collection of an empirical reference corpus of eye movement measures and development of corresponding analysis tools and measures in the form of an R package, (3) deduction and experimental tests of causal hypotheses, using cognitive experiments involving eyetracking and gaze-contingent display change methodology, and (4) the development of central concepts of a narratology of multi-media texts and the empirical description of the genre of the graphic novel from historical and comparative perspectives.”

To project website