Conferences

Symposium “The Speech Bubble, Between Text and Image”

The Speech Bubble, Between Text and Image
International one-day symposium
Friday, March 14th, 2025
 
Location: Room Jacques Glowinski, Collège de France, 11 place Marcelin-Berthelot, 75231 Paris cedex 05
Event held in person with a virtual attendance option (Zoom link provided upon request).
 
With the support of the Maison de la Culture du Japon à Paris and the East Asian Civilizations Research Centre (CRCAO)

Contact (information and Zoom link: marianne.simon-oikawa (ät) u-paris.fr)
 
Presentation
 
This one-day symposium aims at showing the full complexity of the speech bubble, an object that has been largely neglected by research until now, and that cannot be defined solely as ‘the curve surrounding the words spoken by comic strip characters’ (Trésor de la langue française). Based on the observation that the speech bubble often also contains images and even blank spaces, and that its forms and functions vary according to the objects, periods and geographical areas in which it is present, the papers presented during this symposium propose to analyse the complex relation between speech bubble, text and image in a number of visual sources objects drawn from Japanese corpora or indirectly linked to Japan.
This one-day symposium is the first event organized within the ‘Histoires de bulles’ programme (CRCAO, East Asian Civilizations Research Centre, 2025-2029), which aims to study the speech bubble and turn it into an object of knowledge, both in terms of its own characteristics and its visual and wider cultural ecosystem, in order to ultimately identify an “economy of the bubble”, or even sketch out a general theory of it.
 
 
 
Program
 
Morning session
 
Chair: Matthias Hayek (École Pratique des Hautes Études-PSL, to be confirmed)
 
09:30-09:45. Opening remarks. Marianne Simon-Oikawa (Paris Cité University)
 
09:45-10:30. Marianne Simon-Oikawa. Fukidashi, Building an Object Between Text and Image
In Japanese, the word fukidashi, which designates the speech bubble, does not refer to any specific form or content. It instead designates a breath exhaled out of an unidentified source. The variety of objects in which the speech bubble appears in Japan during the Edo period makes it necessary to draft a list of the types of objects in which it is concentrated, and to make a few initial hypotheses about it, which future research may support, develop or contradict. This presentation will focus on selected examples that challenge the definition of the bubble as a container for speech.
 
10:30-11:15. Estelle Bauer (Musée Guimet). When Pictures Start Talking. Dialogues and other Texts Written in Emaki (gachûshi 画中詞)
If speech bubbles are a way to make characters talk, some emaki achieve the same effect by writing dialogue directly next to them. We will look at a few examples to reflect on the role these gachûshi play in the production of the visual narrative: they provide details about the characters’ actions and emotions; they introduce a sense of time into the picture.
 
11:15-12:00. Jaqueline Berndt (Stockholm University). Speech Balloons Beyond Speech: The ‘Return’ of Pictorial Contents?
Manga researchers have approached fukidashi mainly as speech balloons – “transdiegetic devices” that turned manga into “audiovisual comics” (Exner 2022) and visual modifiers of dialogue lines’ auditory properties (Manga no yomikata 1995). Attention has also been paid to speech balloons’ placement on manga pages and their role in visually guiding the reader’s gaze, while the analysis of their contents has considered hand-writing and type, font variations, and punctuation marks. Inspired by pictorial dream balloons from the late Edo period, my presentation focuses on non-linguistic contents: small pictures of characters’ heads inside the balloon, as well as pictorial runes such as sweatdrops and cross-popping veins attached to a balloon rather than the respective speaker. These devices internalize the external parts of Hosoma’s “speaker–listener–object” triangle (2023), ultimately foregrounding relationalities through a blurring of previously clear divides. In addition, pictorial balloon contents serve exaggeration (both humorous and affective) and instruction (efficiently providing information), as well as an economy of space. This sets them apart from Edo-period imagery, which nevertheless may help challenge simplistic assumptions of ‘speech’ balloons as providing an auditory experience.
 
Afternoon session
 
Chair: Thomas Lamarre (The University of Chicago)
 
14:00-14:45. Blanche Delaborde (Fukuoka University). The Spatial Paradox of Speech Bubbles in Manga
Speech bubbles in manga form a surprisingly complex narrative device. In particular, although the space delimited by the outline of the bubbles initially appears as a two-dimensional space analogous to that of the page, many examples contradict this idea. For instance, speech bubbles outlines are often porous, especially in the presence of handwritten secondary lines. In other cases, the bubbles carry iconic or conventional signs (keiyu) that suggest some depth. In addition, the anchoring of the balloons to the three-dimensional diegetic space presents many ambiguous cases, that blur between two-dimensional and three-dimensional spaces.
 
14:45-15:30. Ladan Niayesh. From Playscript to Mangascript: The Speech Bubbles in Manga Shakespeare’s The Tempest
As the spearhead of the ‘Self Made Hero’ company’s endeavour to break through a heavily Asianised global manga market, the British ‘Manga Shakespeare’ series paradoxically enlists that icon of European culture not hegemonically, but as a mediator gesturing East. Speech bubbles occupy a key position in this process of cultural negotiation in one of the early volumes in the series, The Tempest (2007), illustrated by a British mangaka but set in a post-industrial, environmentally damaged island beaten by Hokusai-style waves. The speech bubbles keep about forty percent of the original Shakespearean text, but adapt it to visually and culturally navigate between a theatrical script and the aesthetic alphabet of the manga. This involves for example playing on bubble contours to express emotions and speech volume in the opening tempest scene, sticking in that to the received conventions of Japanese manga. But the artist also instills less common and inventive features into the manga format, such as deleting the speech bubble altogether to blend thought and nature for monologues. Eventually tailored into strips of paper carrying identity, speech is what both the spirit Ariel and the magician Prospero dissolve into in the final pages of the volume, recalling a dilapidated folio of Shakespeare’s complete works scattered and lost to the winds, or alternatively and more optimistically Prospero’s magic book travelling east over the oceans for a fresh lease of life with a rejuvenated audience.

Workshop “Comics as Educational Media in the 20th Century: International Perspectives”

Termin:
2025 01 17 - 2025 01 18

Comics as Educational Media in the 20th Century: International PerspectivesNext January, the DFG-funded research project “Comics as Educational Media in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1960s-1980s” will hold an international final workshop in Hamburg on the topic of “Comics as Educational Media in the 20th Century: International Perspectives”, co-organized by Sylvia Kesper-Biermann. Participation is possible, but due to the limited space available, please register by December 31, 2024 with Anna Strunk (anna.strunk (ät) uni-hamburg.de).

Organizers’ Note:

At present it seems like common sense that comics can be a beneficial tool for educational purposes. Their ability to explain and illustrate even complicated topics as well as their motivational impact seem to make them perfect to “loosen up” the classroom. However, in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), this approval of comics only came after a phase, during the 1950s, of vehement rejection and fear with regard to the supposed dangers of comics. They were accused of causing analphabetism, increasing juvenile delinquency and keeping children away from “good literature”. Similar to the FRG, other countries experienced their own struggles and discussions surrounding the use of comics in educational contexts. The upcoming workshop “Comics as Educational Media in the 20th Century: International Perspectives” aims to focus on these developments in East Germany, Poland, France, Great Britain, the USA and Japan. Six speakers will shed light on comic reception and usage in education in their countries of research, opening up a room for comparison and discussion.

The workshop concludes the German Research Foundation project “Comics as Educational Media in the Federal Republic of Germany (from the 1960s to the 1980s)”.

Continue Reading: Complete Program

Hybrid lecture series “Learning about the Shoah through Narrative Art and Visual Storytelling”

Termin:
2024 10 08 18-20 Uhr - 2025 01 28

In the winter semester starting next week, Daniel Stein is organizing a lecture series in Siegen together with Jens Aspelmeier and Jana Mikota on the topic of “Learning about the Shoah through Narrative Art and Visual Storytelling – Transnational Remembrance in Graphic Literature”. It will focus on comics and graphic literature, but also on children’s books. Other ComFor members such as Ole Frahm and Ralf Palandt will also be giving talks. All sessions take place on Tuesdays from 6-8 pm. If you are interested in attending individual sessions or the entire lecture series digitally, you are highly welcome to do so by registering through e-mail at mikota (ät) germanistik.uni-siegen.de.

To the lecture series page

Guest Lecture (hybrid) Siegen by José Alaniz: “Comics of the Anthropocene: Graphic Narrative at the End of Nature”

Termin:
2024 06 17 4.15 p.m.

On Monday, June 17 2024, José Alaniz (University of Washington, Seattle, USA) will give a guest lecture at the University of Siegen (English Department), for which attendance via WebEx is possible. If you are interested, please register at stein [ät] anglistik.uni-siegen.de to receive the link.

“Comics of the Anthropocene:Graphic Narrative at the End of Nature”

How have comics artists depicted the human-caused destruction of the natural world? How do these works resonate with the ethical and environmental issues? How have comics mourned the loss of nature over the last five decades?
José Alaniz’s lecture explores the representation of animals, mass extinctions and climate change in the era popularly known as the Anthropocene in (mostly) US comics, primarily since the first Earth Day in 1970.

Key words: Critical Animal, Studies, Environmental Humanities, Affect Studies, Comics Studies
Organizers: Prof. Dr. Daniel Stein, Svitlana Stupak

Announcement poster
To the event page

ComFor-panel at the 21st Comic-Salon 2024: “Das Stigma des ‘Anderen'”

Comic-Salon Erlangen 2024As in many previous years, the International Comic-Salon Erlangen 2024 (May 30-June 2) will once again feature a series of lectures by the Society for Comic Studies (ComFor), which Clemens Heydenreich has once again put together and will chair. In 2024, the nine lectures will be entitled “Das Stigma des ‘Anderen’: Klischees und Zuschreibungen im Comic” (The Stigma of the ‘Other’: Clichés and Attributions in comics).

 

Friday, May 31, 2024
11:00
Barbara M. Eggert (Linz): „Completely dotty“? Zur visuellen Umsetzung von nicht-normativen psychischen Zuständen in Elisa Macellaris Kusama (2020)

11:30
Myriam Macé (Bremen): „Ça devient rare comme race“ – Eine autobiographische Spurensuche in Lebensborn (2024) von Isabelle Maroger

12:00
Iris Haist (Plauen): “Alien in New York”. Die Darstellung des “Anderen” in Nnedi Okorafors LaGuardia

Saturday, June 1, 2024
11:00
Hanspeter Reiter (Landsberg/Lech): Gendern in Comics – wie kann das (an)gehen?

11:30
Jörn Ahrens (Gießen): Othering und Kolonialismus: Atar Gull und die Rache der Sklaven

12:00
Dietrich Grünewald (Reiskirchen): Das Judenbild im Comic

Sunday, June 2, 2024
11:00
Thomas Sähn (Paris): (De)Konstruktion des Andersseins als inhärenter Bestandteil erzählerischer Bildsprache

11:30
Martin Frenzel (Darmstadt): Über MAUS hinaus. Judenhass, Shoah und Israel im Comic. Von Krigstein über Kichka bis Joann Sfar

12:00
Katharina Serles (Wien): „Kauf dir mal ein Buch. Loser!“ Klasse, Körper und Kanon in Eva Müllers Scheiblettenkind (2023)

Zur Veranstaltungsseite für alle Abstracts (weiter auf “Filter” –> “Vorträge/Präsentationen”)

Roundtable discussion (online): “Birgit Weyhe’s ‘Rude Girl’: Comics, Blackness, and Translation Dialogue”

Termin:
2023 10 06 04:00pm Ortszeit (22:00h CET) - 2023 10 06

nullNext Friday, ComFor member Elizabeth ‘Biz’ Nijdam is organizing and chairing a panel discussion at the Goethe-Institut Montreal for the German Studies Association’s Comic Studies Network with comic artist Birgit Weyhe and Dr. Priscilla Layne (UNC-Chapel Hill) about their recent collaboration on Rude Girl (2022). Involved are also the UBC Comic Studies Cluster and the Department of Classics, Modern Languages, and Linguistics at Concordia University. For those interested, online registration and participation is possible.

More information:
“In 2018, Birgit Weyhe joined a room of German comics scholars at a GSA (German Studies Association) panel on diversity and inclusion in German-language comics to bear witness to a presentation by Dr. Brett Sterling that openly criticized her graphic novel Madgermanes (2016) for its representation of Blackness and cultural appropriation. While this commentary was far from welcome, it marked the start of the author’s journey in revaluating her power and privilege as a comics artist. Soon thereafter, Weyhe met Dr. Priscilla Layne, an Associate Professor of German Weyhe und Layne in MontrealStudies at UNC-Chapel Hill with Caribbean roots. Over the course of the next few years, Weyhe and Layne collaborated on the graphic novel Rude Girl (2022), which explore Layne’s life growing up in Chicago, experience of racism, and path to German studies, all the while interrogating what it means for a White artist to represent Black lives.

This panel will take the form of a conversation with the co-creators of Rude Girl, discussing Layne and Weyhe’s collaboration and the role of comics in intersectional explorations of Black identity.”

Go to the registration site

Conference “Comics, the Children and Childishness”

Termin:
2023 09 18 - 2023 09 19

On September 18/19, 2023, the conference “Comics, the Children and Childishness”, will take place in presence at KASK. It is one of the culminating outputs of the ERC project “Children in Comics: An Intercultural History (1865-)”, led by Prof. Maaheen Ahmed at Ghent University. The project aims to reconstruct a cultural history of European comics, particularly focusing on comics from Britain, France, Belgium, Germany, Spain and Italy.

The conference is organized by Maaheen Ahmed und ComFor-member Giorgio Busi Rizzi (Ghent University). It aims to further deepen the interests and achievements of the ERC project, with the goal of opening a crucial forum for dialogue between European and international researchers, focusing on a distinctly international corpus, covering comics not only from the dominant areas of Western Europe and North America, but also from Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, Asia and Latin America. In this way, the conference aims to inspire further research in this neglected but crucial aspect of comics studies.

The complete program can be found here. Among the contributors are also other ComFor members besides Rizzi (Benoît Crucifix, Jaqueline Berndt, Eva Van der Wiele). Those interested in attending the conference can register here. Please address any questions to comics@ugent.be.

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.

Comics|Histories – International Conference

Termin:
2021 07 16 - 2021 07 17

The international Conference “Comics|Histories” is organised by ComFor members Jaqueline Berndt (Stockholm University, Sweden), Felix Giesa (Goethe University
Frankfurt, Germany) and Christina Meyer (TU Braunschweig, Germany).

Description of the conference by the organisers:

“Comics Studies are on the rise, but the bulk of comics research prioritizes contemporary productions, whereas comics’ histories and genealogies, or preconditions of what appears as comics and  the forms of graphic narratives today, remain understudied. To fill the gap and to map as yet unknown territories, a new book series will be launched soon by academic publisher Rombach Wissenschaft, and this conference, organized by the series editors, is intended as a kick-off event. The book series and conference aim to revise the wide spectrum of what is now regarded as comics (including caricature, cartoons, graphic novel, etc.), broadening the view of Comics Studies not only retrospectively, but also prospectively at a moment in time when modern media identities are dissolving.

We welcome in particular contributions that engage with both theories and methods employed in Comics Studies so far, and crucial disciplinary concerns of history (as specified in literary, cultural, media, or art history, and so on). While there is already a significant amount of publications that foreground representations history in comics, our conference seeks to highlight comics-specific contributions to history. In addition to that, we invite papers that address comics from a transnational while culturally situated, perspective, without privileging national histories of the medium in the narrower sense, i.e., as confined to North American, Franco-Belgian, or Japanese publication markets. Last but not least, we call for papers that put the spotlight on the historiography of Comics Studies, in other words, the inter- and transdisciplinary research on comics as an object of analysis in itself. Multidisciplinary assessments of the field and its practices of research and publishing, authorand editorship promise new insight into processes of knowledge formation, as well as the power relations involved.”

Registration is open until July 15th via comicshistories@uni-frankfurt.de.

The conference takes place online via ZOOM from July 16th to July 17th; the ZOOM link will be sent out to registered participants.

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.