While the flourishing field of Comics Studies has acknowledged the work of such comics journalists as Joe Sacco, Emmanuel Guibert, Carol Lay, Sue Coe, and others, those names have typically appeared in the context of more general studies of nonfiction and documentary comics genres. It is our intention with this volume to tease out the specificity of comics journalism — generically, historically, and in the many particular forms it has taken internationally. Throughout the volume, we hope to emphasise comics journalism as a world genre which has grown out of a diversity of national traditions of comics, literary, and journalistic practice. Of particular interest is the way the anti-establishment ethos which has characterised the development of comics globally finds expression in the profound commitment to social justice which motivates so much of the best work of contemporary comics journalism.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- comics journalism and literary journalism
- comics journalism and underground & alternative comix
- comics journalism and the critique of mainstream news
- comics journalist as witness, commentator, chronicler
- the phenomenology of comics journalism
- defamiliarizing the real in comics journalism
- comic journalists and their sources
- gutter politics: implicating the reader in comics journalism
- comics journalism and the history of journalistic illustration
- comics journalism and documentary film
- getting the story: the practice of comics journalism
- the vertical scroll: translating comics journalism for digital platforms
- publishing comics journalism (Cartoon Movement, The Nib, Symbolia . . .)
- comics journalism and social justice
- journalism as art: comics journalism in the gallery
- comics journalism and empathy
- comics journalism and memory
- comics journalism as trauma narrative
- comics journalism and narrativity
- comics journalism goes mainstream (“The Last Phone Call” and the NYT; Victoria Lomasko and Joe Sacco in The New Yorker.)
- comics journalism and world literature
- reporters and comics artists as collaborators
Please submit abstracts of 200 – 300 words no later than Dec. 31, 2022
Final essays should be 6,000 words, including notes and references and be argumentative rather than descriptive in approach.
Authors whose works are included in the volume will be responsible for clearing all permissions for the re-use of third party material.
Address abstracts to Dr Leonora Flis leonoraflis@gmail.com and Dr. Rob Alexander ralexander@brocku.ca