Annual Conferences

Since 2006, ComFor organizes annual academic conferences on various topics within the field of comics research.

19th annual conference, October 2024:
Graphic Medicine (Groningen)

Call for Papers
Program

18th annual conference, December 2023:
Was war, ist, wird Comicforschung – für uns? (Gleichen)

Programm
Publication

17th annual conference, November 2022:
Labor and class conditions in comics (Dortmund)

Call for Papers
Program
Please note: The conference will take place online. The program has been revised accordingly.

16th annual conference, October 2021:
Coherence in Comics: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Salzburg)

Call for Papers
Program & Registration
Proceedings

15th annual conference, October 2020:
Comics and Agency – Actors, Publics, Participation (Tübingen)

Call for Papers
Program & Registration
Conference Proceedings

14th annual conference, November 2019:
Translation, Localisation, Imitation, and Adaptation:
Comparative Aspects in Comics Studies (Schwarzenbach a.d. Saale)

Call for Papers
Program

13th annual conference, September 2018:
Spaces Between – Gender, Diversity and Identity in Comics (Cologne)

Call for Papers
Exhibitions
Program & Registration
Conference Report
Conference Proceedings
part 1, part 2

12th annual conference, December 2017:
Comics and their Popularity (Bonn)

Call for Papers
Program
Conference Report

11th annual conference, November 2016:
Comics in der Schule – Schule im Comic [Comics in Schools – School in Comics] (Essen)

Call for Papers (German)
Program (German)
Conference Report (German)
Tagungsband

10th annual conference, September 2015:
History in Comics – History of Comics (Frankfurt/Main)

Call for Papers
Program
Conference Proceedings
Nr. 1, Nr. 2

9th annual conference, September 2014:
Drawing Borders, Crossing Boundaries (Berlin)

Call for Papers
Program
Conference Proceedings

8th annual conference, November 2013:
Comics and the Natural Sciences (Erlangen)

Call for Papers
Program
Conference Report (German)
Conference Proceedings

7th annual conference, September 2012:
Comics and Politics (Freiburg)

Call for Papers
Program
Conference Proceedings
Media Coverage

6th annual conference, November 2011:
Reportagecomics. Dokumentarische Comics. Comicbiographien [Documentary Comics: Journalism and Biography] (Passau)

CfP and Program
Conference Report
Conference Proceedings

5th annual conference, November 2010:
Bilder des Comics – Visualität, Sequenzialität, Medialität [Pictures of Comics: Visuality, Sequentiality, Mediality] (Gießen)

Program
Photographic Documentation
Online-Publication of the Proceedings

4th annual conference, November 2009:
Erzählen im Comic [Narration in Comics] (Köln)

Program
All Abstracts
Conference Proceedings

3rd annual conference, November 2008:
Der Comic als Gegenstand der Kultur- und Sozialwissenschaften [Comics as a Subject of Cultural and Social Studies] (Koblenz)

Program
Conference Report

2nd annual conference, November 2007:
Comicforschung als interdisziplinäre Aufgabe [Comic Studies as an Interdisciplinary Task] (Koblenz)

Program

1st conference, November 2006:
Forschungsberichte zu Struktur und Geschichte der Comics in Deutschland [Research Reports on the Structure and History of Comics in Germany] (Koblenz)

Program
Conference Proceedings

19th ComFor-annual conference 2024: „Graphic Medicine“ in Groningen

Termin:
2024 10 23 14:30 Uhr - 2024 10 25

From October 23-25, 2024, the 19th annual conference of the Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) will take place at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. The event is organized by Janina Wildfeuer and Barbara Postema. Keynote speakers are Elisabeth El Refaie (Cardiff University), Irmela Krüger-Fürhoff (Freie Universität Berlin) and Erin La Cour (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam).

“Initiated in 2007, the area of study called ‘Graphic Medicine’ has developed into an impressive field of research that is today broadly understood as “the intersection of the medium of comics and the discourse of healthcare” (Czerwiec et al. 2015). As a discipline, it understands itself as an ‘emerging area of interdisciplinary academic study’ including both theoretical and methodological developments from several disciplines connected to comics studies as well as practical insights and applications from medical practitioners in the healthcare context.

 The conference would like to bring these theoretical and methodological developments as well as practical insights and applications together and offer a fruitful place for discussion and critical evaluation of the discipline and its most recent developments and insights. We aim at opening the conference again for an international context with topics such as: Graphic Medicine for Scholarship, Graphic Storytelling and Medical Narrative; Graphic Pathography; Iconography of Illness; practical applications of Graphic Medicine.

Weiterlesen: Tagungsprogramm

18th ComFor Annual Conference 2023: „What was, is, becomes comics studies – for us?“

From December 11-13, 2023, the 18th annual conference of the Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) will take place at the Stiftung Akademie Waldschlösschen in 37130 Gleichen. The event will be organized by Christina Meyer, Vanessa Ossa, and Lukas R.A. Wilde.

On the occasion of ComFor’s upcoming tenth anniversary as a registered association, this timespan will be subject to a critical reflection: How has comics studies developed and changed over the past ten years? Which recurring, but also new questions and research perspectives have we been dealing with since 2014? Which disciplinary shortcomings or desiderata do we need to address more precisely together in the future? „What was, is, becomes comics studies – for us?“ quite literally addresses our institution as well as the biographically shaped perspectives of our participating members.

Individual seats to participate in the lectures and panel discussions are still available, inquiries can be sent informally to vorstand@comicgesellschaft.de.

Read more: Full program

Program of the ComFor Annual Conference 2021: “Coherence in Comics”

Termin:
2021 10 14 - 2021 10 16

The ComFor web editorial team is back from its summer break with an announcement on its own behalf: the 16th annual conference of the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) will take place from 14-16 October 2021!

Announcement:

The 16th Annual Conference of the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) approaches the topic “Coherence in Comics” from an interdisciplinary perspective. We seek to not only negotiate and explain meaning-making across panel borders and semiotic modes, but also across disciplines, seeking commonalities, shared interests and points of contact. […] We are looking forward to keynotes by Janina Wildfeuer, Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Information Studies at the University of Groningen, Barbara Postema, author of Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments, and Charles Forceville, Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam (Department of Media Studies). Apart from the conference’s central focus on coherence, ComFor aims to promote interdisciplinary cooperation and dialogue across all areas of comics research. The 16th Annual Conference will therefore continue the tradition of an open workshop format that allows researchers to present and gather feedback on various projects within comics studies, without any thematic restrictions. We are also excited to announce a comic reading (in German) by Vina Yun as part of this year’s program, arranged by the Austrian Comics Society (OeGeC – Österreichische Gesellschaft für Comic-Forschung und -Vermittlung).

Registration:

The conference will be held online via WebEx; there is no conference fee; registration by email to comfor2021@sbg.ac.at is requested.


Organisators:

  • Elisabeth Krieber (Universität Salzburg)
  • Markus Oppolzer (Universität Salzburg)
  • Hartmut Stöckl (Universität Salzburg)

Programme:

Thursday, 14 Oct., 2021
10:30 – 11:30 – Members’ Meeting of the Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) (in German)
11:30 – 13:00 – Lunch Break

13:00 – 13:15 – Conference Opening

13:15 – 14:15 – OPEN FORUM I

Mihaela Precup and Dragoș Manea – “The Overfamiliar Perpetrator: Hipster Hitler, Transcultural Memory, and the Banalisation of Genocide”
Pedro Réquio – “Revolutionary Comics/Revolutionary Politics: Portugal in the 1970’s”

14:15 – 14:45 – Break

14:45 – 15:45 – OPEN FORUM II
Ahlam Almohissen – “Multimodal Humour in Cartoons: Social Semiotic Perspective”
Xiaolan Wei – “Coherence Constructed through Comics and Spoken Language in Chinese College Students’ Five Minutes English Academic Speech”

15:45 – 16:15 – Break

16:15 – 17:30 – KEYNOTE Janina Wildfeuer
“Demystifying the Magic. A Multimodal Linguistic Approach to Coherence in Visual Narratives”

17:30– 18:00 – Break

18:00 – 19:00 – AWARD CEREMONY
Martin-Schüwer-Publication Prize 2021 for Excellence in Comic Studies


Friday, 15 Oct., 2021
09:00 – 10:30 – PANEL 1: FORMS AND AESTHETICS OF COHERENCE (Panel Chair: Stephan Packard)

Elisabeth El Refaie – “A Tripartite Classification of Visual Metaphor as a Basis for Studying Coherence in Comics”
Martin Foret – “‘Like a Speech’ or Searching for Coherence between Codes Used in Comics: The Interplay of Various Codes within the Specific Complex Code (or Better Meta-Code) of Comics”
Lukas R.A.Wilde – “Essayistic Comics: Non-narrative Coherence and Pictogrammatics with Schlogger, Sousanis, Barry”

10:30 – 11:00 – Break

11:00 – 12:30 – PANEL 2: COHESION IN COMICS: MULTIMODAL AND PRAGMATICIST APPROACHES (Panel Chair: Janina Wildfeuer)

Chiao-I Tseng – “Structures of Cohesion in Comics”
John Bateman – “Nonlinear Coherence? Steps Beyond the Sequence in Sequential Art”
Stephan Packard  – “Cohesion in Panel Graphs: A Psychosemiotic Approach”

12:30 – 14:00 – Lunch Break

14:00 – 15:30  – PANEL 3: IN(COHERENT) SPACES AND NARRATORS (Panel Chair: Mihaela Precup)
Barbara Margarethe Eggert  – “Comics as Coherence Machines? Exemplary Observations on the Functional Spectrum of Museum Comics”
Martha Kuhlman -“Comics and the Miniature: Thinking Inside the Box”
Elizabeth Allyn Woock – “The Graphic ‘I’ in Academic Comics”

15:30 – 16:00 – Break

16:00 – 17:15 – KEYNOTE: Charles Forceville: “Visual and Multimodal (Meta)Representation of Speech, Thought, and Sensory Perception in Comics”

17:15 – 17:30  – Break

17:30 – 19:00 – COMIC READING (in German)
presented by the Austrian Comics Society (OeGeC Österreichische Gesellschaft für Comic-Forschung und -Vermittlung)
Vina Yun: Homestories


Saturday, 16 Oct., 2021
09:00 – 11:00  – PANEL 4: Linguistic and Cognitive Approaches to the Visual Language of Comics (Panel Chair: Neil Cohn)

Neil Cohn – “Grammar of the Visual Language of Comics”
Irmak Hacımusaoğlu  – “What Are Motion Lines Anyways?”
Bien Klomberg – “Calvin the Elephant: Resolving Discontinuity through Conceptual Blends”
Lenneke Lichtenberg  – “Understanding Lightbulb Moments in Comics: The Processing of Visual Metaphors that Float above Characters’ Heads”

11:00 – 11:30 – Break
11:30 – 12:45 – KEYNOTE Barbara Postema – “Narrative Structure in Wordless Comics”

12:45 – 14:30 – Lunch Break

14:30 – 16:00 – PANEL 5: FRACTURED BODIES AND IDENTITIES (Panel Chair: Barbara Margarete Eggert)

Tina Helbig  – “Frames as Skin and Comic Book Pages as a Fractured Bodies in Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman and in Emily Carroll’s Short Horror Comics”
Carolina González Alvarado  – “A Perverse Beauty and the Mechanisms of Control over the Body: An Analysis of Helter Skelter by Kyoho Okazaki”
Rita Maricocchi – “(In)coherencies in the Manifestations of German Identity in Birgit Weyhe’s Madgermanes”

16:00 – 16:30 – Break

16:30 – 18:00 – PANEL 6: COHERENCE IN SUPERHERO NARRATIVES: THE CHALLENGES OF SERIALIZATION AND WORLD-BUILDING (Panel Chair: Lukas R.A. Wilde)
Mark Hibbett – “Image Quotation of Past Events to Enforce Storyworld Cohesion in John Byrne’s Fantastic Four”
Amadeo Gandolfo  – “Do the Collapse: Final Crisis and the Impossible Coherence of the Superhero Crossover”
Scott Jordan and Victor Dandridge Jr. – “Invincible: The Many Shapes, Forms, and Sizes of Coherence through Comics”

18:00 – 18:15 – Conference Closing


Further information and a detailed programme can be found on Event website.

Schedule for the Annual ComFor Conference 2020: „Comics & Agency“

Termin:
2020 10 08 - 2020 10 10

15th Annual Conference of the German Society for Comic Studies:

Comics & Agency: Actors, Publics, Participation

Online | Live via Zoom

Registration:

There is no conference fee, but in order to participate you will need to register by sending an email to comfor@comicgesellschaft.de no later than 5 October 2020.

Organisers:

Vanessa Ossa (University of Cologne)
Jan-Noël Thon (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)
Lukas R. A. Wilde (University of Tuebingen)

Schedule:
Thursday, 8 October 2020
13:30 CEST Welcome and Introduction: Christina Meyer (Free University Berlin), Vanessa Ossa (University of Cologne), Jan-Noël Thon
(Norwegian University of Science and Technology), Lukas R. A. Wilde (University of Tuebingen)
Panel 1: Digital Agency
14:00 CEST
  • Nicolle Lamerichs (HU University of Applied Sciences Utrecht):
    Comics Interfaces: Digital Innovation and Fandom on Webtoon
  • Giorgio Busi Rizzi (Ghent University):
    Won’t Somebody Please Think of the Readers? Digital Comics Enhancing and Undermining the Agency of Their Users
  • Hans-Joachim Backe (IT University of Copenhagen):
    Who Controls the Speech Bubbles? Refl ecting on Agency in Comic-Games
15:30 CEST Coffee Break
Panel 2: Intermedial Agency
16:00 CEST
  • Manuel Herrero-Puertas (National Taiwan University):
    “Unconquerable and Simple”: Whitman, Democracy, Comics
  • Greice Schneider (Universidade Federal de Sergipe):
    Telling Stories with Photo-Archives: Narrativizing Visual Archives through Documentary Comics
  • Jared Gardner (The Ohio State University):
    Playing Comics, Reading Games
17:30 CEST Coffee Break
Keynote 1
18:00 CEST Henry Jenkins (University of Southern California):
Comics and Stuff
Award Ceremony: Martin-Schüwer-Preis 2020
20:00 CEST Dorothee Marx (University of Kiel), Daniel Stein (University of Siegen), and the Winner of the Martin-Schüwer-Preis

 

Friday, 9 October 2020
Panel 3: Authorial Agency
11:30 CEST
  • Georges Felten (University of Zurich):
    Moving Pictures: “Anti-Authorial” Dynamics in Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz
  • Laura Glötter (Heidelberg University):
    Comics Artist versus Artistic Genius: Authorship and Metafi ction in Fiske’s and Kverneland’s Kanon
  • Jörn Ahrens (University of Giessen):
    Ada in the Jungle and Aya in Yop City: Doing Gender and Doing Africa
13:00
CEST
Lunch Break
Panel 4: Editorial Agency
14:00 CEST
  • Jaqueline Berndt (Stockholm University): Distributive Agents Coming to the Fore: The Manga Editor in Recent Media Texts
  • Barbara Eggert (University of Art and Design Linz):
    Distribution and Publication as Topics in Autobiographical Graphic Novels and Comics Anthologies
  • Jessica Burton (University of Luxembourg):
    Tintin’s Global Journey: Invisible Actors behind a Europeanisation of the Comics Industry in the 1960s
15:30 CEST Coffee Break
Panel 5: Distributional Agency
16:00 CEST
  • Shawna Kidman (University of California San Diego):
    Licensing and Licensors as Agents of Change in US Comic Book Publishing
  • Romain Becker (École Normale Supérieure de Lyon):
    How Reprodukt Creates Series
  • Ian Horton (University of the Arts London) and John Miers (Kingston University London):
    Issues of Agency when Archiving and Displaying Mini-Comics from the Les Coleman Collection
17:30 CEST Coffee Break
Keynote 2
18:00 CEST Mel Gibson (Northumbria University):
Librarians, Agency, Young People, and Comics: Graphic Account and the Development of Graphic Novel Collections in Public Libraries in Britain in the 1990s
Virtual Comic Museum Erlangen
20:00 CEST Lisa Neun and Ralf Marczinczik

 

Saturday, 10 October 2020
Open Forum
11:30 CEST
  • Cathérine Lehnerer (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna):
    Comic Workshops: New Ways to Shape Participation in Education
  • Janina Wildfeuer, Ielka van der Sluis, and Gisela Redeker (University of Groningen):
    No Laughing Matter? Analyzing Instructional First-Aid Comics
  • Mark Hibbett (University of the Arts London):
    Toward a Tool for Measuring Transmedia Character Coherence
13:00
CEST
Lunch Break
Panel 7: Fan Agency (Part I)
14:00 CEST
  • Benjamin Woo (Carleton University):
    The Self-Commodifi cation of Comics Fandoms: From “Active” to “Agentic” Audiences?
  • Matthew J. Smith (Radford University):
    Pilgrimage to Hall H: Fan Agency at Comic-Con
  • Suzanne Scott (University of Texas at Austin):
    Towards an Aesthetics of Noncompliance: Comics Iconography and Fan Tattoos
15:30 CEST Coffee Break
Panel 8: Fan Agency (Part II)
16:00 CEST
  • Safiyya Hosein (Ryerson University/York University):
    Muslim Manga: Fandom Discourses and Issues of Cultural Participation
  • Anke Marie Bock and Ashumi Shah (University of Augsburg):
    Death of the Endless and Fan Projections
  • Christopher Pizzino (University of Georgia):
    Comics and the Omnipotent Reader: The Body of Richard C. Meyer
17:30 CEST Coffee Break
Concluding Discussion: Where Do We Go from Here?
18:00 CEST Vanessa Ossa (University of Cologne), Jan-Noël Thon (Norwegian University of Science and Technology),
Lukas R. A. Wilde (University of Tuebingen)

 

Download schedule as PDF file.

Program of the Annual ComFor Conference 2019: “Comparative Aspects in Comics Studies”

14. Annual Conference of the Society for Comics Studies (ComFor):

Translation, Localisation, Imitation, and Adaptation: Comparative Aspects in Comics Studies

 

Program

D| Talk or panel in German

E| Talk or panel in English

Freitag | Friday
11.30 am D| Member’s meeting of the Society for Comics Studies (ComFor)
1.00 pm Mittagspause | Lunch Break (Snacks)
Offenes Forum I | Open Forum I
1.30 pm D| Lukas Etter:

»It’s a relief« Aline Kominsky-Crumbs spielerische Imitation und Subversion von Stildiskursen

2.00 pm D| Marie Müller:

Prudhommes Adaption von Struths Museum Photographs

2.30 pm E| Jennifer Neidhardt:

»I knew there was something in the closet«: Marvel’s Spider-Man and Queer Identity

3.00 pm Pause | Break
Offenes Forum II | Open Forum II
3.15 pm E| Katharina Serles and Marina Rauchenbacher:

Visualities of Gender in German-language Comics

3.45 pm E| Jeff Thoss, Ian Hague, Ian Horton, and Sylvia Kesper-Biermann:

Lost in Translation: Connecting English-language and German-language Comics Studies

4.15 pm E| Ivan Petrovic:

Translating Comics between Cultures and within Languages: The Case of Yugoslavian Comics in German-Speaking Countries

4.45 pm Pause | Break
5.00 pm Begrüßung | Commencement
D| Panel I: Comic-Übersetzung und ihre populäre Vermittlung
5.15 pm Alexandra Hentschel (Schwarzenbach):

Das einzige Museum für Comic-Übersetzung

5.45 pm Nassrin Sadeghi (Dortmund):

comic+cartoon. Pläne zum neuen Schauraum für Comic-Kunst in Dortmund

6.15 pm Pause | Break
E| Keynote I: Practice in Translation
6.30 pm David Zane Mairowitz (Berlin): KafKa in KomiKs
8.00 pm Abendessen | Dinner (Buffet)

 

Samstag | Saturday
E| Keynote II: International Perspectives on Comics Translation
9.00 am Federico Zanettin (Perugia):

New Methods in Examining Comics in Translation

10.15 am Pause | Break
E| Panel II: Translation and Localisation
10.30 am Laura Antola (Turku):

»If the other Nordic countries wish to publish rubbish, they can go ahead!« Transnational strategies for adapting the Marvel Universe in Finland

11.15 am Romain Becker (Lyon):

»Just according to keikaku (keikaku means plan)«:How fans translate (or don’t)

12.00 noon Pause | Break
12.15 pm Keren Zdafee (Tel Aviv):

Egyptianizing Mickey and Minnie? On cultural transfers and the domestication of Western imagery in the Egyptian satirical press of the 1930s

1.00 pm Lynn L. Wolff (Michigan):

Translation, Modification, Visualization: Comparative Aspects of Nora Krug’s Heimat

1.45 pm Mittagspause | Lunch Break
E| Panel III: Intermedia Adaptation
3.00 pm Olga Kopylova (Sendai):

Lines and Layers, Look and Feel: Transformations of style in manga-to-anime adaptations

3.45 pm Elisabeth Krieber (Salzburg):

Adapting the Queer Autographic Self: Fun Home from the Comics Page to the Broadway Stage

4.30 pm Pause | Break
4.45 pm Marina Rauchenbacher (Wien):

Who (and where) is Alice? Anke Feuchtenberger’s Adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice

5.30 pm Pause | Break
6.00 pm Preisverleihung & Preisvortrag | Award & Special Keynote

Martin-Schüwer-Publikationspreis für herausragende Comicforschung

Martin Schüwer Publication Award for Excellence in Comics Studies

7.00 pm Conference Dinner

 

Sonntag | Sunday
D| Keynote III: Kulturwissenschaftliche Translatologie
9.00 am Natalie Mälzer (Hildesheim):

Comic-Übersetzungen und Adaptionen als kulturelle Praxis

10.15 am Pause | Break
D| Panel IV: Übersetzungen und Lokalisierungen
10.30 am Christine Hermann (Wien):

Die vielen Namen von Suske und Wiske. Ein flämischer Abenteuercomic in deutscher Übersetzung

11.15 am Yun-Jou Chen (Taiwan/Mainz):

»Popalania, the perfect country« Neue Überlegungen zu dem Fall der Popeye-Übersetzung (1967-1968) in Taiwan

12.00 noon Pause | Break
D| Panel V: Intermediale Adaptionen
12.15 pm Dietrich Grünewald (Koblenz/Reiskirchen):

Die Kunst der Adaption – Oscar Wilde: Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray

1.00 pm Linda-Rabea Heyden (Jena/Berlin):

Klassikeradaption im Comic funktional und medial,

am Beispiel von Goethes Faust

1.45 pm Mittagspause | Lunch Break

& Treffen der AG Diversity | Meeting of the Committee for Diversity

3.00 Markus Oppolzer (Salzburg):

Nachgezeichnete Leben:Die Künstlerbiografie am Beispiel Vincent van Goghs

3.45 pm Véronique Sina (Köln):

Queering Comic and Film: Coming out und coming of age in Le Bleu est

une couleur chaude (2010) und LA VIE D’ADÈLE (2013)

4.30 pm Pause | Break
D| Panel VI: Noch einmal: Vergleichen
4.45 pm Jörn Ahrens (Gießen):

Die Erfindung des Comic in Deutschland. Frühe Perspektiven der Comicforschung

5.30 pm Ole Frahm (Frankfurt am Main): Phantom. Phantomias.
6.15 pm Abschlussdiskussion | Conclusion
~7.00 pm Abreise | Departure

 

Organisers:

Christian Bachmann, Juliane Blank, Alexandra Hentschel and Stephan Packard

See also:
Registration
Accomodation
Directions

Conference Report: ComFor Annual Conference 2018

A Conference Report by J. Rehse, P. Zwirner, M. Pollich, Y. Neuhaus, S. Böhm, and L. Respondek (students of the University of Cologne), Photography by Philin Zwirner

From September 17th to 19th 2018 the 13th Annual Conference of the German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) took place at the University of Cologne. Under the main theme “Spaces Between – Gender, Diversity and Identity in Comics” the conference schedule – planned and organized by Véronique Sina and Nina Heindl – offered a wide range of interesting insights into state-of-the-art research on the nexus between the medium of comics and categories of difference and identity such as gender, dis/ability, age, and ethnicity. Participants who already arrived on Sunday (the day before the official start of the conference) had the opportunity to become familiar with the city of Cologne. In the afternoon, the cultural program started with a guided tour through the exhibition “Avengers Assemble” held at the Cöln Comic Haus. With highly entertaining host(s) and a lot of interesting details, the visit of the exhibition was a perfect start for the conference. Afterwards, the group took a stroll along the Rhine in warm and shiny weather. With a boat-trip along the picturesque panorama of the most beautiful part of Cologne, the pre-program ended and gave the participants the opportunity to enjoy the rest of the evening in the historic center of Cologne.

At the official beginning of the conference on Monday, the conveners Véronique Sina and Nina Heindl, as well as Manuela Günter (Vice-Rector for Gender Equality and Diversity of the University of Cologne), and Stephan Packard (President of the German Society for Comics Studies) welcomed all speakers and guests. They stressed that it is their great pleasure to open a conference that not only focuses entirely on gender, diversity, and identity in comics, but also presents a majority of female speakers as well as an all-female organizational team – a premiere for the German Society for Comics Studies.

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