CFP: UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, Gainesville, Florida, on March 21-22, 2009
Jonathan M Hall
jmhall
Fri Sep 12 00:22:54 EDT 2008
Perhaps Joe Murphy can give us more sense of what is planned!
jmh
From: H-Net Announcements
http://www.h-net.org/announce/show.cgi?ID=163800
Convergences: Comics, Culture and Globalization
Location: Florida, United States
Call for Papers
Date: 2008-12-01
Date Submitted: 2008-09-04
Announcement ID: 163800
The University of Florida's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences is
pleased to announce
the 2008 UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels: "Convergences:
Comics,
Culture and Globalization," which will be held in Gainesville,
Florida, on March 21-22,
2009.
This seventh annual conference on comics will focus on issues of
globalization and
reception. Comics are, now more than ever, an international
phenomenon, but
scholarly accounts of comics are often limited by an exclusive focus
on examples
from a single national or continental comics industry. This problem
is exacerbated
by the scarcity of translations. Furthermore, one of the many
obstacles facing the
emergent discipline of comics studies is the difficulty of
communication between
scholars working in different national and cultural contexts. This
conference is
intended as a small step toward meeting these challenges. The goal of
this conference,
therefore, is to consider the history and reception of comics on a
global level.
We are interested in papers that focus on international comics and
animation markets,
cross-cultural reception of comics, and the differential status of
comics in different
cultures (e.g. as a children's/mass medium or as a mainstream form of
literature).
Here we are using "comics" in its broadest sense, embracing
animation, manga, anime,
graphic novels, webcomics, political cartoons, and even some "fine
art." In addition to
theoretically grounded work, we encourage submission of archival and
historical research.
Special guests will include Susan Napier (From Impressionism to
Anime: Japan as
Fantasy and Fan Cult in the Mind of the West), Jessica Abel (La
Perdida), Matt Madden
(99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style) and Sara Cooper
(Founder, MLA Discussion
Group on Cuban and Cuban Diaspora Cultural Production).
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
* The reception of comics outside their original cultural context,
both by fans
(e.g. manga fandom in the United States) and by creators (e.g.
American comics'
influence on the development of manga and BD, the "nouvelle manga"
movement).
* Connections between comics form and cultural status. How have views
of the
cultural position of comics (e.g. as a children's versus an adult
medium or as a
mass-cultural versus a literary medium) evolved differently in
various cultures?
What does this have to do with the formal properties of the medium,
such as
sequentiality and hybrid image-textuality?
* Comics as a global market: migrations of talent between multiple
comics industries
(e.g. the Spanish and Filipino "invasions" of British and American
comics in the 1960s
and 1970s, the Korean influence on U.S. animation) and cross-national
collaborations
(e.g. mangakas working for Marvel and DC).
* Comics studies as a global discipline. What barriers exist to the
study of comics
from a global perspective and to collaborations between comics
scholars from
different cultures? How might such barriers be removed?
* The impact of the internet on the global comics market. How have
scanlations
and filesharing helped or hindered global comics industries?
* Canon formation and expansion. What happens when works from unfamiliar
cultural contexts (e.g. Persepolis and Epileptic) enter a national
comics canon?
* Comics and travel/tourism, e.g. in Craig Thompson's Carnet de Voyage.
* Comics and issues of postcolonial identity, e.g. in Abouet &
Oubrerie's Aya,
Baru's Road to America, Horrocks's Hicksville.
* Translations of comics, both official and unofficial, e.g.
scanlation. What are the
unique difficulties and advantages of comics translation as opposed
to prose translation?
What are the unique difficulties and approaches to translating comics
from different
cultures? How, if at all, do "official" and "unofficial" translators
approach comics
translations differently?
Abstract submissions should be approximately 250-500 words in length.
Presentations
will be 15 minutes with 5 minutes of question and answer.
The deadline for abstract submissions is December 1, 2008. Abstracts
or questions
should be submitted to Aaron Kashtan at akashtan at english.ufl.edu or
Tania
Darlington at tdarlington1 at ufl.edu. See the conference website for
schedules and
additional information: .
Tania Darlington
Department of English
University of Florida
Email: tdarlington1 at ufl.edu
Visit the website at http://global.comic-studies.org/
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