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!

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!

Progress: A Decade of Comics Scholarship
Leeds Central Library 20-21 September

Call for Papers

Deadline extended to the 23rd of July 2018.

Comics Forum 2018 is the tenth anniversary of the annual conference series. To celebrate this milestone, we invite scholars from around the world to join us for a two-day series of talks looking back at the subjects Comics Forum has focused on over the past decade and considering how they have changed and developed. We are now open to submissions on any of the following themes, reflecting the topics from previous years’ events (please indicate which theme you are addressing when you submit your abstract):

• Genre (2016)
• Graphic Medicine: Visualizing the Stigma of Illness (2011)[1]
• Materiality and Virtuality (2011)
• Multiculturalism and Representation (2012)
• Politics (2015)
• Possibilities and Perspectives (2009)
• Sculpture and Comic Art (2011)[2]
• Small Press and Undergrounds (2013)
• Space (2017)
• Theory and Practice (2010)
• Violence (2014)
• Women in Comics (2010)[3]

Submissions will be considered in any of the following three formats (please indicate which you are proposing when you submit your abstract):

• Paper: 15-minute paper on a focused topic.
• Panel: 1 hour structured discussion between three or more participants (N.B.: this should be a coherent unit, not simply a collection of three or four papers).
• Workshop: 1 hour interactive, collaborative session aimed at producing outputs to be published on comicsforum.org.

Proposals of up to 250 words in length are now being accepted at the following link:http://bit.ly/comicsforum2018 The deadline for submissions is the 23rd of July and you will be notified of acceptance by or before the 30th of July. Please include a short (100 word) biography of your speaker(s) with your proposal. We look forward to welcoming you to Leeds!

***

[1] Graphic Medicine: Guest conference organised by Ian Williams and MK Czerwiec.
[2] Sculpture and Comic Art: Guest conference organised by Jon Wood and Kirstie Gregory.
[3] Women in Comics: Guest conference organised by Sarah Lightman, Catriona MacLeod, Hattie Kennedy and Emily Rabone.

Coming up at Comics Forum 2014 on Thursday-Friday next week, we have a fantastic lineup of speakers! Our keynote speech will be delivered on Thursday afternoon by Professor Jane Chapman, and we look forward to welcoming a host of other top speakers to Leeds Central Library for two days of fascinating talks on violence. See below for the full list of speakers.

THURSDAY 13 NOVEMBER

Jane Chapman: ‘Unspoken Violence: Redefining of Cultural Record, 1914-18’

Kat Lombard-Cook Structural Subversion: Violence Against the Comics FormRoger Sabin Ally Sloper meets Jack the Ripper: comedy and violence in late 19th century London Alex Link Scales of Violence, Scales of Justice, and Nate Powell’s Any EmpireChristopher J. Thompson “Boiled or Fried, Dennis?” Understanding the displacement of violence in ‘Dennis the Menace and Gnasher’ Olivia Rohan Onomatopoeia as an agent of violence in manga: multimodality and translation strategies in battle manga and horror manga Penelope Mendonça Drawing difficult truths; how can a humorous graphic novel include violence during pregnancy? Cameron Fletcher Censorship and the Control of Violent Comics: The Code of the WestDan Smith Architecture, Violence and Hope: A Visitor’s Guide to Mega City One Malin Bergström Will Eisner and the Art of War: The Role of Educational Comics within the American Defence IndustryBradley Reeder The life and death of the city inWatchmen Enrique del Rey Cabero Violence and memory: the role of comics in portraying the Spanish Civil War and the Francoist repressionKevin Chiat “The Curse of Superman”: Humanism, Masculinity and Violence in the Superman Mythos Harriet EH Earle The Whites of their Eyes: Implied Violence and Double Frames in Blazing Combat and The ‘NamKwasu David Tembo 72 Votes: A Death in the Family as Mimetic Crisis Mihaela Precup “I think we’re maybe more or less safe here”: Communities under Siege during the Lebanese Civil War in Zeina Abirached’sA Game for SwallowsKevin J. Wanner In a World of Super-Violence, Can Pacifism Pack a Punch? Examining the Theme of the Pacifist Superhero through the Character of Wonder Man in Marvel’sUncanny AvengersJoan Ormrod Women on the Edge: Unruly Bodies, spectacle and violence post 9/11

FRIDAY 14 NOVEMBER

Brett Elhoffer The Yellow Peril Meets Superman: Depictions of the Chinese in 20th century American Comic Books Ian Horton No More Heroes Anymore? Representations of Violence in British War Comics of the 1970sLaurike in ‘t Veld The Depiction of Sexual Violence in Genocide Comics Ester Szép Trauma Theories and Joe Sacco’s Comics About IraqNicola Streeten The comics form and the ambivalence of sexual violence Jörn Ahrens Bring the War Back Home: Reflecting Violence inDMZLouisa Parker (Una) Autobiographical Content and the Legacy of Artemisia, or Why Should We Care If Someone Was Raped?Joseph Willis Pushing Back the Apocalypse: Violence as Identity and Rebellion in the Post-ApocalypticJulia RoundMisty: Gothic for Girls in British Comics Fabio Mourilhe Practice of subjectivity in300Anna Madill Intimidating men: Patriarchal violence in Korean shonen-aiLet Dai Lynn Fotherington, Kieron Gillen and Stephen Hodkinson Story-telling, Historicity and the Depiction of Violence inThree – a conversationJeffrey John Barnes To See What You Won’t Hear: Violence in Palestinian Arab Political Cartoons from the British Mandate through the PresentHugo Frey Adapting Jean-Patrick Manchette’sLe Petit bleu de la côte ouest (1977): the Comparative Politics of Cinema and Graphic Novel Re-interpretationsOrla Lehane Animating “The Troubles”: Northern Ireland inTroubled Souls (1989) Ria Uhlig Violence in French graphzinesOlga Kopylova Violence against violence? (Self-)destruction and plausibility of revenge in the mangaGankutsuō Paul Williams Violence, Regression and Therapeutic Narcissism in Jules Feiffer’sTantrum (1979)Laura A. Pearson Seeing (in) Red: Reading Intersections of Violence in Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas’sRed: A Haida Manga

REGISTRATION

Tickets for Comics Forum 2014 are priced as follows:

1 day pass (13thor 14th): £10

2 day pass (13thand 14th): £20

4 day pass (two day Comics Forum pass + 2 day Thought Bubble Convention pass (SRP £24)): £40 (save £4!)

To register, simply email comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk with your name and how many tickets you’d like.

Comics Forum 2014 is supported by:Thought Bubble, theUniversity of Chichester,Dr Mel Gibson and Molakoe.

Registration is now open for Comics Forum 2013: Small Press and Undergrounds, which will be running atLeeds Central Library on the 21st and 22nd of November.

This year features a fantastic lineup of speakers and papers, including:

Cameron Fletcher:“Amateur” HourKenan Kocak:Koloni: Pirate Comics, Published Once In A WhileLise Tannahill:AssessingOlolê: Vehicle for Breton Pride or Source of Shame?David Huxley:‘I still have 50 Copies in the Attic’: British Regional Underground comics 1970- 1980Martin de la Iglesia:Early manga translations in the West: underground cult or mainstream failure?Louisa Parker:Small Story – Big PictureLaura A. Pearson:Nina Bunjevac’s “Alternative” Catwoman in ‘Bitter Tears of Zorka Petrovic’Brenna Clarke Gray, Damon Herd, Hattie Kennedy, Ernesto Priego, Peter Wilkins and David N Wright (Graphixia):Small is the New Big: The Comics Criticism Blog as Small PressMihaela Precup:‘It came from Alpha Centaur looking for love’: The Mutant and Non-human Body in Denis Kitchen’sBizarre Sex (1972-1982)Gareth Brookes:Small Press Comics and Fine ArtPaddy Johnston:From Random House to Rehab: Julia Wertz and the Small PressDan Smith:Revisiting Donald Parsnips’ Daily JournalIan Horton:Dave Sim’sCerebus the Aardvark: Self-publishing, the Direct Market and Creative FreedomChristopher J. Thompson:Comix Narrative Parody: Hunt Emerson’s Rime of the Ancient MarinerJohn G. Swogger:Underground Archaeology: Comics as alternative agents of professional discourseLydia Wysocki, Jack Fallows and Mike Thompson:Epic themes in awesome ways, or how we madeAsteroid Belter: The Newcastle Science ComicR.Finn:Using a webcomic comment thread to gauge reader experienceAysel Demir:Political Humor Is Absolutely A “Serious” Job!John Miers:Metaphor, financial crisis, and the small press

Further speakers are still to be confirmed, and we’ll put the details up here as soon as we have them.

Registration fees this year are as follows:

1 day pass (21stor 22nd): £10

2 day pass (21stand 22nd): £20

4 day pass (two day Comics Forum pass + 2 dayThought Bubble Convention pass (SRP £22)): £35 (save £7!)

To register, simply emailcomicsforum@hotmail.co.uk with the phrase ‘CF2013 Registration’ in your subject line and tell us your name and how many tickets you’d like. It’s that simple!

We look forward to seeing you in November!

Comics Forum 2013 is supported by:Thought Bubble, theUniversity of Chichester,Routledge,Dr Mel GibsonandMolakoe.