CFC: Materiality: Drawing (on) Technologies

Publication
Sequentials - Journal for scholarship drawn in comics form
Institution: Trace Innovation Initiative, Department of English, University of Florida
Managing Editor: Madeline B. Gangnes
Stichtag: 2019 06 01

Materiality is the mediating force through which our senses engage information. As print and digital technologies alike have become increasingly more sophisticated, accessible, and affordable, some creators, scholars, and consumers have embraced innovative digital technologies, while others remain devoted to more familiar materials and formats. Differences in income, education, geographical location, and other factors heavily influence the technologies—digital and physical—through which we produce and consume content, conduct business, and communicate with others.

For Sequentials’ fourth Call For Comics, we seek visual interpretations of materiality in its myriad forms. How does form dictate content, and vice versa? How do digital platforms impact engagement and accessibility? Where do we situate the digital/analog divide? In short: how do we understand and navigate the material considerations of our world?

Submissions must be illustrated in comics form and can visualize one or more aspects or interpretations of the subject. Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:

    • Print forms/technologies
    • Book/publishing history
    • Digital materiality
    • Experimental or atypical formats
    • Transitions from print to digital (or vice versa)
    • Non-visual texts
    • Haptic interfaces
    • Intersections between comics and materiality

By “comics,” we loosely mean illustrated, sequential images that may or may not incorporate words and may or may not be bounded within panels or other boundary markers. We invite submissions from individuals in all academic disciplines, regardless of their level of experience with comics or illustration “skills.” Submissions will also be welcomed from non-academics, and the editorial team at Sequentials will consider all submissions equally. Submissions may be of any length and may be either a large, single image or a series of “pages” to be displayed sequentially. We especially encourage submissions that embody or express the material consideration(s) they engage. All submissions will be blind reviewed by the Sequentials editorial team and outside reviewers.

To submit to this themed issue or to our General Forum, upload a submission title, cover letter, and high-resolution image(s) to the “Sequentials 4 – Materiality: Drawing (on) Technologies” category of the Submittable platform here: https://trace.submittable.com/submit by June 1, 2019. Please direct any questions to sequentials@english.ufl.edu.

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