The University of Bonn warmly invites to the 12th annual research conference of the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) from December 1 to 3, 2017: “Comics and their Popularity”. It is organized by Joachim Trinkwitz and Rolf Lohse.
Visitors are kindly requested to register at comicforschung@uni-bonn.de. The conference fee will be 30 € for guests (ComFor-members pay a reduced fee of 20€ and students 10 €). Please transfer to:
Universitätskasse Bonn
Sparkasse KölnBonn
IBAN: DE08 3705 0198 0000 0576 95
BIC: COLSDE 33
Important notice: Please always include the follwing:
61 117 / 282 11 / PN 73125016
Short invitation:
“Comics might currently seem to show some ambivalence towards their own popularity. On the one hand, multitudes have access to these media that provide entertainment and, increasingly, information. On the other hand, it is their very popularity that has in the past given rise to popular suspicions against comics. It is no later than in the 1950s that parents and pedagogues all over the world begin to fear that comics might lead children and teenagers astray, prompting them to limit access, which has in turn constrained the formal and topical development of the art form. At the same time, rendering comics as harmless entertainment for kids attracted criticism of immaturity, excluding it from the canonical reading for self-defined members of the educated classes. In the 1970s, the art form could thus be rediscovered as a subversive mode of expression. The attempt to use the term ‘graphic novel’ as a vehicle to approach new audiences was again met with ambivalence: While the traditional fan scene, often wary of outsiders, saw its identity and large parts of its reading conventions at risk, publishers, reviewers and book sellers saw an opportunity to gain new readership and popularity. For some parts of academia, it was only then that comics became an object of cultural research. It is these dialectics of exclusions and inclusions, access and constraint, that the conference on Comics and their Popularity at Bonn University will discuss. ”
Full Program:
Friday, 1st of December 2017
| Prelude: Open Workshops | |||
| 14:00 | Zita Hüsing (Bonn): Being and Nature – The Significance of the Southern Space of the Swamp in Alan Moore’s The Saga of the Swamp Thing | ||
| 14:30 | Rafał Jakiel (Wrocław): Batwing, Batflügel oder Flügel-Bat – Die onimischen Einheiten im Comic | ||
| 15:00 | Daniela Kaufmann (Graz): “A Study in Black and White” – Zur Signifikanz der Farben ›Schwarz‹ und ›Weiß‹ im Comic | ||
| 15:30 | Elisabeth Krieber (Salzburg): Subversive Female Performances in Visual Media – Phoebe Gloeckner’s und Alison Bechdel’s Graphic Narratives | ||
| 16:00 | Coffee break | ||
| 16:15 | Karoline M. Pohl (Göttingen): “Mind the Gap” – Grundlagenforschung für eine allgemeine Didaktik der Sequenziellen Kunst | ||
| 16:45 | Sakshi Wason (Delhi): Regarding Two Ruptures – The Emergency (1975–77) and the Partition (1947) of India | ||
| 17:15 | Coffee break | ||
| Section 1: Identity Practices (I) | |||
| 18:20 | Véronique Sina (Bochum): “Comickeit is Jüdischkeit” – Über das diskursive Zusammenspiel von Comic, Populärkultur und jüdischer Identität | ||
| 19:00 | Pnina Rosenberg (Haifa): Mickey au camp de Gurs – Political criticism and auto censorship in comics done during the Holocaust | ||
| Keynote I | |||
| 20:00 | Julia Round (Bournemouth): Canon or Common? Sandman, Aesthetics and Literariness | ||
Saturday, 2nd of December 2017
| Section 1: Identity Practices (II) | |||
| 09:00 | Daniel Stein (Siegen): Batmans queere Popularität – Ein comicwissenschaftlicher und kulturhistorischer Annäherungsversuch | ||
| 09:40 | Laura Antola (Turku): Marvel’s Comics in Finland – Translation, “Mail-Man” and the popularity of superheroes | ||
| 10:20 | Kaffeepause | ||
| Section 2: Political and Ideological Aspects | |||
| 11:00 | Andreas Heimann (Wiesbaden): Populismus im Populären. Über die Mechanismen der umgekehrten Subversion von Comics | ||
| 11:40 | Mario Zehe (Leipzig): Das Popula(e)re und das Signifikante. Der Comic als Antwort auf die Krise liberaler Erzählungen? | ||
| 12:20 | Stephan Packard (Köln): President Lex Luthor, Wakanda und der osteuropäische Schwarzwald. Zur populären Ideologie der Fiktionalität in Comics | ||
| 13:00 | Lunch break | ||
| Section 3: Gestures of Legitimacy | |||
| 15:00 | David Turgay (Landau): Das Alternative im Populären – Eine korpusgestützte Analyse von Mainstream-Comics | ||
| 15:40 | Markus Oppolzer (Salzburg): Der Fluch der Graphic Novel aus (hochschul)didaktischer Sicht | ||
| 16:20 | Dietrich Grünewald (Reiskirchen): Grenzgänger. Comics und Bildende Kunst | ||
| 17:00 | Coffee break | ||
| 17:40 | Christian A. Bachmann (Bochum): “Slippers and music are very different things”, oder: von high key zu low key. Zur Darstellung populärer Musik in Bildergeschichten des 19. und Comics des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts | ||
| 18:20 | Kirsten von Hagen (Gießen): Tintin und die Recherche – Von der ›ligne claire‹ Hergés zu den synästhetischen Traumsequenzen bei Heuet | ||
| Keynote II | |||
| 20:00 | Martin Lund (Växjo/New York): Jack T. Chick, a Popular Propagandist | ||
Sunday, 3rd of December 2017
| Section 4: Facets of Authorship | |||
| 09:00 | Michael Wetzel (Bonn): “Graphic Auteurism” – Von Kreativität und Copyright im Comic | ||
| 09:40 | Joachim Trinkwitz (Bonn): Auteur-Serien im Comic | ||
| 10:20 | Lukas R.A. Wilde (Tübingen): Public Domain Superheroes, Jenny Everywhere und dōjinshi. Die Comic- und Manga-Figur als meta-narrativer Knotenpunkt der Partizipationskultur | ||
| 11:00 | Coffee break | ||
| Section 5: The Popularity of Comics |
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| 11:40 | Jörn Ahrens (Gießen): Der Comic ist das Populäre. Zur populärkulturellen Gestalt eines Mediums der Massenkultur | ||
| 12:20 | Ole Frahm (Frankfurt/M.): Proletarität statt Popularität. Eine Kritik der Rede über Comics | ||
| 13:00 | Final Discussion | ||