Vom 9. bis 11. August 2018 findet unter dem Motto „MIND THE GAPS! The Futures of the Field“ die erste Jahrestagung der Comics Studies Society (CSS) statt. Dort wird es auch ein Panel der AG Comicforschung der GfM mit deutschen Comicforscher_innen geben: Das von ComFor-Mitglied Björn Hochschild organisierte Panel versammelt drei Beiträge zum Thema „Disregarded Gaps, Blanks, and Discontinuities in the Comics Reading Experience“.

Panel-Vorträge & Kurzbeschreibungen:

(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.“

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Vom 15. bis 19. Juli 2018 findet in Krakau der „XIth Congress of the European Jewish Studies Association (EAJS)“ statt. Auf ebendiesem gibt es u.a. auch ein Panel zu „Jewish Women in Comics“, welches gemeinsam von Véronique Sina und Sarah Lightman organisiert wurde; moderiert wird das Panel wird von Kalina Kupczynska (Lodz).

Panel-Vorträge & Kurzbeschreibungen:

(1) „Idolizing Jewish Women*: Gender & The Second Commandment in Comics“ – Katharina Serles (Dresden)

„Images of Jewish women* are somewhat precarious. First, from a religious perspective, as ‚[o]bservance of the Second Commandment is profoundly gendered“ and „images of women are doubly restricted under the fear of idolatry.‘ Thus, the visual depiction of historically and strategically marginalized figures such as Regina Jonas – the first woman* to be ordained as a rabbi – via comics might classify as ‚doubly subversive‘: What is shown is not supposed to be shown, much less exist. Second, from a feminist standpoint, which has discussed, questioned and critiqued the respective gender roles of „Woman as Image, Man as Bearer of the Look”. What is shown is to be looked at for (erotic) pleasure and remains without agency. Therefore, I would like to propose a gendered perspective on Jewish (an)iconicism, idolatry and iconoclasm , drawing from visual studies and discussing mostly German-speaking comics. I will argue whether ‚idolizing‘ Jewish women* – in works by Elke Renate Steiner, Barbara Yelin and Katrin Bacher e. g. – in both a literal and a metaphorical sense might continue projections, misrepresentations and fetishizations or manage to establish an ‚oppositional gaze.'“

(2) „Jewish Gender Trouble-Constructions of Gender and Jewish Identity in the Comics of Aline Kominsky Crumb“ – Véronique Sina (Köln)

„As Andrea Most points out, every comic artist dealing with Jewish characters has to decide ‚how to represent a Jewish body and how to determine what exactly a Jewish narrative looks like.‘ Hence, ‚[t]he choices each artist makes about how to represent Jewish bodies tell a story about the shifting status of Jewishness in contemporary […] popular culture.‘ In fact, when it comes to gendered Jewish identities, the body plays a crucial role. In her expressionistic (auto-)biographical comics Jewish-American Underground cartoonist Aline Kominsky Crumb addresses the central role of the body for the representation and cultural construction of Jewish women, showing that ‚[…] the Jewish body is always inevitably a gendered body.‘ Paying particular attention to comic-specific modes of (visual) representation, my paper explores how Kominsky Crumb’s distinctive style manages to generate Jewish Gender Trouble. As will be shown, her ‘grotesque’ and cartoony drawings not only question the reliability and authenticity of the things depicted, they also undermine established notions of what is considered to be suitable, acceptable and beautiful to look at – especially when it comes to representations of the female (Jewish) body. In this respect, the gendered Jewish identities found in the comics of Kominsky Crumb must be understood as constructed, performative concepts, of doing gender and doing (Jewish) identity.“

(3) „Gendered Jewish Childhoods in Comics about the Shoa“ – Markus Streb (Gießen)

„Stories about children are an increasing trend among comics dealing with the Shoah. Especially the last two decades brought many significant works in which the protagonists were women and children. One of the most prominent examples might be Miriam Katin’s We Are on Our Own, the only comic done by a survivor herself. There are further stories dealing with children in hiding, like Mendel’s Daughter by Martin Lemelman or the countless comics dealing with Anne Frank. Collections like Philippe Thirault’s Les Enfants Sauvées, present various stories about children in one issue. Adult female protagonists can be found in comics like The Search by Eric Heuvel et al. or Rutu Modan’s The Property. Consequently, scholarly research has identified the tendency of those stories to feminize Jewish victims. This paper argues that the portrayal of Jewish girls and boys can fulfil different narrative purposes. In order to detect some of these purposes, I will show to what extend aspects like agency or the portrayal of bodies of male and female protagonists vary among the comics. In order to provide a reflection on tendencies of feminization and passivation that can be found in the comics, the focus will be on narratives dealing with hiding, rescue and resistance. I will furthermore show which aspects of the Shoah are never or scarcely told in the stories focussing on children, in order to address interpretations of the extermination which are thus implied.“

(4) „Jewish Motherhood/Unmotherhood: Breastfeeding, IVF and the Holocaust“ – Sarah Lightman (Glasgow, UK) and Emily Steinberg (Penn State, USA)

„‚Jewish Motherhood/Unmotherhood‘ is a joint art project by fine artists and comics artists Sarah Lightman and Emily Steinberg that explores sociocultural pressure within the Jewish community towards motherhood. These comics, paintings and drawings are imbedded in their own autobiographical experiences: Sarah’s experiences of having, and Emily’s experience of not having, children. Jewish motherhood is one of the central tenets of Jewish life, but what if your experience of being a mother is not meaningful or enjoyable? What if you can’t /won’t have children? A culture of expectation, shame and secrecy surround women on all sides of the Jewish motherhood/unmotherhood spectrum. Sarah found the first year of her son’s life exhausting, boring and frustrating and as a result she decided not to have any more children. Yet, she confronts disbelief and criticism for this choice and for her drawings and animation films about her frustrations at parenthood. Emily has experienced I VF, and I VF “failure”, and her creative expressions of this are in contrast to others who refuse to tell of their own fertility treatment. Through this lens, Emily has produced a series of large raw autobiographical oil paintings, drawings and comics revolving around her experience with infertility: combining humor and pathos to communicate her early bright hope and the subsequently absurdly fruitless struggle to become a mother. Both artists feel they live in a space that is profoundly antithetical to the Judaism they were taught in their youth, and is still evangelized today.“

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