The post-millennial years have witnessed significant developments in the field of popular visuality in South Asia and for India at least, a liberalised economy, advancements in digital technology, satellite television, urban beautification projects and a publishing boom have all shaped what we see, how we see it and why we see it. Within this post-millennial, economic, socio-cultural context Indian graphic narratives have prospered. Now, nearly twenty years into a sustained period of their production, there is a need to take stock of the field in order to bring together the various facets of scholarship that continue to emerge about this body of cultural production. Although the early years of the 2000s saw steady production and (in particular, domestic) circulation of Indian graphic narratives, research and scholarship has taken a little time to gain similar momentum but as the canon of creative work has grown, scholarship, particularly in the last seven to ten years has proved to be more sustained and wider in its scope of enquiry. The field now has some key academic texts with many chapters and academic papers supporting this field of interest and research.
The aim of this Special Issue is to publish a selection of academic papers that reflect on and take stock of the field, exploring and presenting key themes, tropes and directions that the Indian graphic narratives scene has pursued collectively over the last 15-20 years.
We are interested in examining the last twenty years of Indian graphic narratives production through the following (and related) topics with the over-arching theme of ‘reflection’ and ‘taking stock’:
- The post-millennial Indian publishing scene and Indian graphic narratives (global corporates, domestic, independent presses and story houses)
- Theoretical approaches to post-millennial Indian graphic narratives
- Graphic narratives of the early post-millennial years – Sarnath Banerjee, Orijit Sen, Vishwajyoti Ghosh as examples
- Comics collectives in India and co-created/curated anthologies of graphic narrative work
- The works of Appupen
- The works of Amruta Patil
- Biography-based graphic narratives
- Graphic non-fiction (such as the First Hand volumes of work)
We invite academic papers of around 5000-7000 words formatted according to T&F’s Reference Style of Chicago Author-Date [For full information on this style, see The Chicago Manual of Style (16th edn) or http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide.html (click on the tab marked author-date to ensure you are using the right style)]
Submission date: March 1st 2020
For initial queries, please email: edawsonvarughese@gmail.com
Guest Editors:
E. Dawson Varughese: Independent scholar UK and Snr Fellow at Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal, India
Sakshi Wason: University of Delhi, India
Varsha Singh: IIT Jammu, India
Journal Editors:
David Huxley Manchester Metropolitan University
Joan Ormrod, Manchester Metropolitan University