Comicgesellschaft

Open Letter to the University of Bonn

Posted on 2021 12 08, 23:59

Securing and maintaining the Bonn Online Bibliography for Comics Research (BOBC)

To the Dean of Philosophy and the Chancellor at Bonn University,

The Bonn Online Bibliography for Comics Studies (BOBC, https://www.bobc.uni-bonn.de) was launched in 2008 under the direction of Dr. Joachim Trinkwitz, research assistant at the Institute for German Studies, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at the Rheinische FriedrichWilhelms-Universität Bonn. Initially designed as a tool for teaching, it was later published online as a service for the research community. Since then, it has been continuously expanded under Trinkiwtz’ direction. Thanks to his tireless effort, it now offers more than 13,500 international entries for researcher in interdisciplinary comics studies. Particularly noteworthy is the rich indexing of all entries (the dynamically expanded keyword catalogue now includes almost 4,800 entries, each in English and German), made possible by Dr. Trinkwitz’ decades of expertise and interdisciplinary knowledge.

The BOBC has become an irreplaceable, unique resource for international comics studies: it is a central point of reference for this growing field. It is acknowledged well beyond the German-speaking world by renowned researchers as well as international institutions of comics research, who regularly use it and recommend it to young academics (see also the attached research report by Prof. Dr. Bart Beaty and Prof. Dr. Benjamin Woo from the Universities of Calgary and Carleton, Canada). Every month, up to 150,000 database queries and hundreds of individual page views are counted by visitors from all over the world (18% of whom come from the USA and Canada). The bibliography has become an indispensable tool not only in German studies, but also in art and media studies, cultural studies and multimodal linguistics, as well as for many other philologies – such as American studies, English studies, Romance studies, Scandinavian studies, and Japanese studies – which we can no longer conceive their teaching and research into comics without this tool. Recently, even representatives of seemingly more remote disciplines such as medicine, religious studies/theology, and geography have become users of the bibliography.

The German Society for Comics Studies (ComFor e.V.) has been supporting the BOBC for almost a decade with regular sums from its membership fees to finance student staff positions for the initial recording of the ever more rapidly growing number of relevant new publications in our research fields. In order to maintain this indispensable resource, however, beyond this continuous technical labour, there is the need for constant indexing, coherence checking, and qualitative data control, for which an experienced colleague such as Dr Trinkwitz is needed.

In order to secure the future of this important resource even after the imminent retirement of our esteemed colleague, we therefore turn to the University of Bonn and its Faculty of Philosophy with two urgent questions in particular:

  • 1) How can the technical infrastructure for the BOBC be secured?
    The BOBC is currently running on a server of the Bonn Institute under the open source database software “WIKINDX”, which is currently maintained steadily and with commitment, but only through the efforts of a few individuals worldwide. Sooner or later, therefore, it will be necessary either to make a switch to a more expensive alternative database system that is professionally maintained, or to set up a (half-time) IT and information technology position that can continue to update and maintain WIKINDX.
  • 2) How can the professional maintenance of the BOBC be secured?

    Quality control, maintenance, and indexing of new entries require the continued work of a fully employed academic at no less than postgraduate level. Additional support by auxiliary staff for data entry can still be ensured through partner institutions such as the German Society for Comics Studies. We would therefore like to invite you to enter into a dialogue with the German Society for Comics Studies to discuss these needs in order to ensure the continued availability of this internationally and interdisciplinarily renowned research resource at the University of Bonn.

Signatories:

Dr. Joachim Trinkwitz for the BOBC

PD Dr. Christina Meyer, Dr. Lukas R.A. Wilde and Dr. Vanessa Ossa
for the Society for Comics Research (ComFor)

Working Group BOBC within ComFor:

Nicolas Gaspers (Düsseldorf),
PD Dr. Christina Meyer (Braunschweig),
Prof. Dr. Stephan Packard (Köln),
Dr. Joachim Trinkwitz (Bonn),
Dr. Lukas R.A. Wilde (Tübingen)

Continue Reading about supporting Institutions, colleagues, and research report

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

Termin:
2021 10 14 - 2021 10 16
online (via WebEx)

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.

New Publication: Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives

Posted on 2021 06 28, 00:01

Today we announce a publication that has the potential to quickly become a standard work in the field of comics studies: the Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives, published by De Gruyter. Edited by Sebastian Domsch, Dan Hassler-Forest and ComFor member Dirk Vanderbeke, this handbook unites a variety of critical approaches, historical contexts, and close readings. We are particularly happy that there are several ComFor members among the contributors to this unique volume.

Go to publisher’s website.

Publisher’s description:

“Whether one describes them as sequential art, graphic narratives or graphic novels, comics have become a vital part of contemporary culture. Their range of expression contains a tremendous variety of forms, genres and modes − from high to low, from serial entertainment for children to complex works of art. This has led to a growing interest in comics as a field of scholarly analysis, as comics studies has established itself as a major branch of criticism. This handbook combines a systematic survey of theories and concepts developed in the field alongside an overview of the most important contexts and themes and a wealth of close readings of seminal works and authors. It will prove to be an indispensable handbook for a large readership, ranging from researchers and instructors to students and anyone else with a general interest in this fascinating medium.”

Contents:

Introduction

  • Sebastian Domsch, Dirk Vanderbeke, Dan Hassler-Forest: “Comics Studies: Survey of the Field”

Part I: Systematic Aspects

Part II: Contexts and Themes

  • Stephan Packard: “Politics”
  • Dan Hassler-Forest: “World-Building”
  • Astrid Böger: “Life Writing”
  • Anna Oleszczuk: “Gender”
  • Kay Sohini: “Queerness”
  • Heike Elisabeth Jüngst: “Science Comics”
  • Sandra Heinen: “Postcolonial Perspectives”
  • Marie Vanderbeke: “DocuComics in the Classroom”
  • Dan Hassler-Forest: “Superheroes – Historical Overview”
  • Matt Yockey: “Superheroes – The Golden Age: Batman”
  • Matt Boyd Smith: “Superheroes – The Silver Age: Nick Fury”
  • William Proctor: “Superheroes – The Dark Age: Superheroes in the 1980s”

Part III: Close Readings

  • Christina Meyer: “Richard F. Outcault: The Yellow Kid“
  • Corey Creekmur: “George Herriman: Krazy Kat“
  • Sebastian Domsch: “Winsor McCay: Little Nemo in Slumberland“
  • Eric Hoffman: “Dave Sim: Cerebus“
  • Martin Lund: “Will Eisner: A Contract with God“
  • Dawn Stobbart: “Raymond Briggs: When the Wind Blows“
  • Joanne Pettitt: “Art Spiegelman: Maus“
  • Nicola Glaubitz: “Robert Crumb”
  • Monika Pietrzak-Franger: “Alan Moore: From Hell“
  • Evan Hayles Gledhill: “Neil Gaiman: The Sandman“
  • Erin La Cour: “Alison Bechdel: Dykes to Watch Out For“
  • Gerry Canavan: “Chris Ware: Jimmy Corrigan – The Smartest Kid on Earth“
  • Erik Grayson: “Daniel Clowes: Ghost World“
  • Luisa Menzel: “Martin Rowson: The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman“
  • Harriet Earle: “Marjane Satrapi: Persepolis“
  • Oliver Moisich: “Grant Morrison: Flex Mentallo“

 

Publication: “Comics and Videogames: From Hybrid Medialities to Transmedia Expansions”

Posted on 2020 12 10, 02:45

For those still looking for a special Christmas gift, we are happy to announce that the book Comics und Video Games: From Hybrid Medialities to Transmedia Expansions, edited by Andreas Rauscher, Daniel Stein und Jan-Noël Thon, was published by Routledge earlier this year in October.  We are proud to say that we are very well represented in this work – not only are two of the editors members, but two of the other contributors as well: Daniel Stein, Jan-Noël Thon, Hans-Joachim Backe and Nina Eckhoff-Heindl.

Official announcement:

This book offers the first comprehensive study of the many interfaces shaping the relationship between comics and videogames. It combines in-depth conceptual reflection with a rich selection of paradigmatic case studies from contemporary media culture. 

The editors have gathered a distinguished group of international scholars working at the interstices of comics studies and game studies to explore two interrelated areas of inquiry: The first part of the book focuses on hybrid medialities and experimental aesthetics “between” comics and videogames; the second part zooms in on how comics and videogames function as transmedia expansions within an increasingly convergent and participatory media culture. The individual chapters address synergies and intersections between comics and videogames via a diverse set of case studies ranging from independent and experimental projects via popular franchises from the corporate worlds of DC and Marvel to the more playful forms of media mix prominent in Japan. 

Offering an innovative intervention into a number of salient issues in current media culture, Comics and Videogames will be of interest to scholars and students of comics studies, game studies, popular culture studies, transmedia studies, and visual culture studies.

 

Contributions:

Further information on the articles as well the PDFs can also be found here. A print version is available from  Routledge.

Martin Schüwer Publication Prize 2021

Posted on 2020 11 05, 00:01

Call for Nominations:
Martin Schüwer Publication Prize for Excellence in Comics Studies

In 2021, the Society for Comics Studies (ComFor) and the Committee for Comics Studies at the German Society for Media Studies (GfM), will award the Martin Schüwer Publication Prize for Excellence in Comics Studies for the third time. Since 2019, the prize has been awarded annually. It promotes the work of emerging scholars, i.e. researchers who, regardless of their actual age, do not yet hold a permanent academic position as tenured faculty. Honoring outstanding publications in the interdisciplinary field of comics studies, the Martin Schüwer Publication Prize aims to create more visibility for comics-related research, promoting and communicating its importance to a wider public.

The prize is named after the late Martin Schüwer, a scholar of English Literature and Culture who specialized in comics studies and who, very unfortunately, died at a far too early age in 2013. His dissertation Wie Comics erzählen (2006) has opened up new ground for narratological comics research and has become a standard work in German-language comics studies. With this and his other works on comics as well as on the didactics of English literature, Martin Schüwer has set valuable standards regarding the excellence, accessibility and range that publications in our fields can achieve. Both as a comics researcher and as a person, Schüwer had a distinct way of talking to people, characterized by his open-mindedness and a genuine interest in others. Talking to and with others, he aimed to advance comics studies. We dedicate the award to him and this very goal.

Submission and nominations:

Eligible for submission are published texts that do not exceed the length of an article or book chapter. They may have appeared as articles in collective volumes or journals, as chapters in longer monographs, or as essays and other text types of similar length. The submitted/nominated texts may have been written by one or more authors. Authors are only eligible for the award if, at the time of nomination, they did not yet hold a permanent job position within academia.

Papers nominated for the Martin Schüwer Prize 2021 must have been published between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2020, in either German or English. Texts that are still forthcoming or only accepted for publication cannot be considered. Papers can only be submitted once. Entire monographs as well as unpublished work from dissertational research are also excluded from submission. Editors of collective volumes or journal issues cannot be nominated; however, nomination of individual contributions to these collections/issues are very welcome.

To nominate yourself or others, please submit the nominated text and a short explanatory statement (300-500 words). Self-nominations are possible and welcome. The deadline for all submissions is March 31, 2021. Please send your nomination as a single pdf to schuewer-preis@comicgesellschaft.de.

Prize and award ceremony:

The award ceremony will take place during the annual conference of the Society for Comics Studies (autumn 2021). The awardee will be asked to give a lecture and introduce their research during the conference. They will also be invited to serve as a member of the jury in the following year and will receive a prize money of 500.00 €. In addition, the German Society for Media Studies (GfM) will free them from any membership fee for one year.

Download call for nominations as pdf file.

Introduction of the new ComFor Managing Comittee

Posted on 2020 08 06, 00:01

During ComFor’s online members’ meeting on 31 July, 2020, the new managing comittee that had previously been elected via postal vote was confirmed.

The previous comitee members Stephan Packard (president since 2013) and Véronique Sina (vice president since 2018) did not run for another term. We would like to thank both of them for their dedication and the many valuable contributions they have made!

The new managing comittee consists of:

President

PD Dr. Christina Meyer has been a ComFor member since 2010. She is an American Studies scholar with a research focus on American newspaper comics of the late 19th century. She is currently visiting professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at the FU Berlin. In November 2019 her monograph Producing Mass Entertainment: The Serial Life of the Yellow Kid was published by the Ohio State University Press (see publisher’s website), which was nominated for the 2020 Eisner Award in the category “Best Academic/Scholarly Work.” She is co-editor of New Perspectives on American Comic Books and Graphic Novels (a special issue of the journal Amerikastudien / American Studies, 2011) and Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Narratives: Comics at the Crossroads (2013). For more information, please see her ComFor profile page.

 

Vice President

Dr. Lukas R.A. Wilde has been a ComFor member since September 2012 and was in charge of the coordination of the ComFor website for many years. In 2018, he first joined the ComFor managing comittee as treasurer. He works in the field of media studies at the University of Tuebingen, where he submitted his Ph.D. thesis on the ‘mangaization’ of public spaces in Japan and the implementation of transmedial figures (kyara) in functional communication (Im Reich der Figuren, Cologne 2018), which was honored with the Roland-Faelske-Award. Moreover, he supports Eve Jay in the organisation of Comic Solidarity (see Website) and is one of the initiators of the German Inclusive Comic Award of the Independent Scene GINCO (see Website). Together with Vanessa Ossa and Jan-Noël Thon, he organizes the 15th annual ComFor conference (8-10 Oktober, 2020) on „Comics and Agency“. For more information, please see his ComFor profile page.

 

Treasurer

Vanessa Ossa has been a ComFor member since 2017, and has been responsible for the website category “Call for Papers” as part of the online editorial team since 2019. Together with Jan-Noël Thon and Lukas R.A. Wilde, she organizes this year’s annual conference “Comics & Agency: Actors, Publics, Participation.” She concluded her doctoral thesis “Sleeping Threats—The Sleeper Agent in Post-9/11 Media” at the collaborative research center “Threatened Order—Societies under Stress” at the university of Tuebingen in 2019. The thesis covers the figure of the ‘sleeper’ in US cinema, serial television, and comic books. Currently, she is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Department for Media Culture and Theater at the University of Cologne. Her most recent research interests include comic book fandom and participatory practice as a part of comic book culture. For more information, please see her ComFor profile page.

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

Termin:
2020 10 08 - 2020 10 10
online - live via Zoom

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.

New Publication: ComFor Conference Proceedings “Spaces Between”

Posted on 2020 07 23, 00:05

We are happy to announce the publication of the proceedings of the 13th annual ComFor conference that took place in September 2018 in Cologne. Edited by ComFor members Véronique Sina und Nina Eckhoff-Heindl, the edited volunme Spaces Between: Gender, Diversity, and Identity in Comics contains numerous contributions by members and non-members.

 

Nina Eckhoff-Heindl and Véronique Sina (eds.)

Spaces Between: Gender, Diversity, and Identity in Comics

Springer, 2020

ISBN 978-3-658-30115-6

 

Publisher’s description:

“The contributions gathered in this volume exhibit a great variety of interdisciplinary perspectives on and theoretical approaches to the notion of ‘spaces between’. Theydraw our attention to the nexus between the medium of comics and the categories of difference as well as identity such as gender, dis/ability, age, and ethnicity, in order to open and intensify an interdisciplinary conversation between comics studies and intersectional identity studies.” → go to publisher’s website

Contents:

  • Cocca, Carolyn: “Reproducing Inequality and Representing Diversity: The Politics of Gender in Superhero Comics”
  • Blank, Juliane: “Gendered Violence and Structures of Power. Reclaiming the Victim Narrative in the Netflix Show Marvel’s Jessica Jones“
  • Brown, Jeffrey A.: “Spider-Analogues: The Unmarking and Unmasking of White Male Superheroism”
  • Crawford, Philip: “My Noose Around that Pretty’s Neck: Meditations on Matt Baker’s Good Girls“
  • Miller, Ann: “The Nude and the Naked: From Fine Art to Comics”
  • Rauchenbacher, Marina, and Katharina Serles: “Fragmented and Framed. Precarious ‘Body Signs’ in Comics by Regina Hofer, Ulli Lust, Barbara Yelin and Peer Meter”
  • Veith, Natalie: “Othering Voices and the Voice of the Other: The Depiction of Joseph Merrick in From Hell“
  • Neldner, Jonas: “Dis/ability and Hybridity: The Bodies of Charles Burns”
  • Becker, Romain: “The Binary Comics of a Non-binary Artist: How Vaughn Bodé’s Identity Structured His Art”
  • Eckhoff-Heindl, Nina: “Branford the Best Bee in the World. The Socio-Culturally Imprinted Self of Anthropomorphic Bodies”
  • Sina, Véronique: “‘If only I’d had a nose job’. Representations of the Gendered Jewish Body in the Works of Aline Kominsky-Crumb”
  • Berndt, Jaqueline: “Manga Aging: Grannies and Gutters”
  • Oksman, Tahneer: “An Art of Loss”

→ Conference report of the 13th annual ComFor conference
→ Overview of all annual ComFor conferences
→ Overview of all conference proceedings