Registration is now open for Comics Forum 2024! Between Bodies: Embodiment and Comics will take place atLeeds Central Library (UK) on the14th and 15th of November as part of the annualThought Bubble Festival. You can find more details about the conference, including the draft programme, at theComics Forum 2024 webpage.

Tickets are priced at£20 per day (including lunch) and can be purchased via Eventbritehere.

We look forward to seeing you in Leeds!

Comics Forum 2024 | 14-15 November | Leeds Central Library (UK)

The thirteenth Comics Forum will focus onthemes of embodiment within comics and Comics Studies across cultures, disciplines, and forms. 

Embodiment is the process through which both individual and cultural ideas and beliefs become material. Embodiment generates an emerging challenge to and within Comics Studies that scholars such as Eszter Szép and Scott Jeffery have begun to explore within the field. Through themes of embodiment, we hope to call attention tohow comics are a deeply embodied medium. Comics become embodied when they are made, through the movement of the body to draw, write, and make comics; when they are read through the readers’ bodily responses; when they become bodies of work or story. Comics themselves embody ideas and narratives through their lines, colours, layouts, speech balloons, visual and narrative styles, publishing formats, and sizes. 

As an embodied medium, comics can re-affirm or unsettle theboundaries of dichotomies, such as the embodied Self/Other; the individual/collective; the objective/subjective; the fictional/real; the powerful/powerless. We are particularly interested in work that moves away from or challenges Western hegemonic forms and practices ofembodiment in comics and graphic narratives.

Comics Studies attempts to situate itself between these cultures, bodies of work, creators, and readers. We are therefore also interested in how Comics Studies is embodied in the academy. What might Comics Studies, as an embodied methodology, bring to other disciplines or fields? Comics Forum 2024 therefore invites participants to consider embodiment through or within any new, developing, or previous work in the field. Subjects for discussion may include, but are not limited to: 

• Comics as archival bodies 

• Embodiment in comics industries 

• Embodiment of Comics Studies in the academy 

• Embodiment in Comics Studies’ research methodologies

• Possibilities of disembodiment in comics

• Embodiment in/of/through comics forms 

• Embodiment and biopolitics in comics

• Embodied identities and positions in comics 

• Negotiations of embodied boundaries in comics 

• Interaction between comics and bodies of comics creators/readers/scholars

Comics Forumwelcomes speakers from a diverse range of backgrounds, ranging from students to senior academics, practitioners and beyond. No particular academic disciplines are preferred, and we are open to proposals on comics and related forms from any part of the world. Proposals of up to250 words for papers of20 minutes in length are now being accepted at:comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk.Alternative formats of presentation, such as workshops or roundtable discussions, are welcome but must fit within the same20-minute time limit. If you are proposing an alternative format, pleaseindicate this in your proposal. 

The deadline for submissions is the31st of August, and you will be notified of acceptance by or before the13th of September 2024. Please includea short (100 word) biography with your proposal. We look forward to seeing you in Leeds!

Registration is now open for Comics Forum 2023: Reboots & Remediations, taking place atLeeds Central Library on the 9th and 10th of November 2023.

We look forward to welcoming delegates to Leeds for what promises to be a fascinating conference covering a diverse range of topics.

You can find theprogramme here, andregister for the event here.

Tickets are priced at £23 for one day or £45 for two days, and include lunch and refreshments.

Leeds Central Library
Leeds, UK
9^th& 10^th of November 2023

Following a hiatus, Comics Forum will return to its regular slot as the academic strand of the Thought Bubble sequential art festival in November 2023!

For our twelfth event, we will focus on thethemesof reboots and remediationsin comics and related forms across cultures.

Comics have a long history of reinventing themselves and adapting to changing circumstances and media forms. Examples are varied, ranging from the resurgence of the superhero genre in the U.S. following the establishment of the Comics Code in 1954 to the repositioning of comics as “graphic novels” in the late 1980s and 1990s, and the increasingly numerous adaptations of comics into other media forms such as film, television and video games. Comics also has a long history of drawing on related art forms including literature, visual arts and performance, adapting their techniques and properties to tell new stories, and new types of stories, in comics. Comics Forum 2023 will focus on the flexibility, adaptability and intermediality of comics. Subjects for discussion might include, but are not limited to:

• Adaptations to and from comics
• Attempts to revitalise comics properties
• Comics in new contexts (e.g., in translation)
• Fan cultures as reworking, reinventing, queering comics, and remaking comics texts
• Moments of reinvention in the cultural, economic, political or social histories of comics
• Rebirths, returns and resurrections of characters or groups in comics
• Representations of comics in other media
• Republications of comics in new formats
• Retconning and revisionist histories
• Revisions of comics in new editions

Comics Forum welcomes speakers from a diverse range of backgrounds, ranging from students to senior academics, practitioners and beyond. No particular academic disciplines are preferred, and we are open to proposals on comics and related forms from any part of the world. Proposals of up to 250 words for papers of 20 minutes in length are now being accepted at:comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk.

Alternative formats of presentation are welcome but must fit within the same 20-minute time limit. If you are proposing an alternative format please indicate this in your proposal.

The deadline for submissions is the 16th of August 2023 and you will be notified of acceptance by or before 30th of August 2023. Please include a short (100 word) biography with your proposal. We look forward to seeing you in Leeds!

by Nicoletta Mandolini, Alessia Mangiavillano, Giorgio Busi Rizzi and Eva Van de Wiele

Lecture by Prof. Ivan Pintor Iranzo

Prof.Ivan Pintor Iranzo’s lecture defined comics as a way of approaching images, juxtaposing and arranging them. At the same time, they express concepts and material forms. He then attempted to disentangle the complex, multiform nature of the medium.