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In: Calls for Papers, Uncategorized

The Forum for Comics and Graphic Narratives seeks proposals for a guaranteed special session at the Modern Language Association annual conference to take place in Philadelphia from January 4-7, 2024. During the pandemic, a number of comics appeared that documented individual and collective experiences of COVID while also critiquing the governmental, economic, and social structures that determined such things as access to care and the regulation of bodies. Kendra Boileau and Rich Johnson’s Covid Chronicles: A Comics Anthology (2021) and Thi Bui and Sarah Mirk’s  In/Vulnerable: Inequity in the Time of Pandemic (2020) captured examples of such work, and showed how comics could not onlyRead More →

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In: Calls for Papers, Uncategorized

NOTE: DEADLINE EXTENDED TO Monday, March 27, 2023 The Forum for Comics and Graphic Narratives seeks proposals for a non-guaranteed special session at the Modern Language Association annual conference to take place in Philadelphia from January 4-7, 2024. Recently comics challenges have been in the news, as school boards and politicians have banned comics like Maus and Gender Queer from library shelves.  Such efforts to curtail comics circulation are not new to comics culture, nor are they limited to the United States.  Given the role of such curtailing in global comics history, comics challenges (calls for a ban), bans (removal of books from shelves), and censorship (editing content orRead More →

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In: Calls for Papers, Uncategorized

Spanish and Iberian Comics/Graphic Narratives This is a proposal for a collaborative session, jointly organized by the Forum Executive Committees of Comics and Graphic Narratives and 20th and 21st Century Spanish and Iberian Languages, Literatures, and Cultures. Comics and other forms of graphic narrative have been central to Spain’s popular culture for much of the nation’s modern history, including a wide variety of formats such as the nineteenth-century aleluya; political cartoons of the War of 1898; tebeo comics of the mid-twentieth century; the outpouring of political and counterculture comics of late Francoism, the transition to democracy, and the 1980s cultural explosion of the movida; asRead More →

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In: 2023, Other Comics Events @ MLA

On Saturday, January 7, from 7-9pm, the Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum will be hosting a free event at Silver Sprocket, a local indie comics publisher (1018 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA 94110)! Award-winning cartoonist and educator Justin Hall will be speaking about his work-in-progress, a graphic novel weaving together memoir and queer San Francisco history, to be published by Abrams Books in 2024. Combining comics readings, storytelling, and ruminations on LGBTQ culture, the nature of memoir, and the challenges of historical comics, this is a unique look into the process behind creating a big, gay, graphic novel. Following his talk, we will have timeRead More →

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In: 2023, Past Sessions

In addition to the three panels that the Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum will be sponsoring at MLA 2023, there will be a number of other comics-related panels at the conference. We will also be hosting an event featuring acclaimed cartoonist Justin Hall at local indie comics publisher Silver Sprocket on Saturday night! Comment on this post if you have any sessions to add. Featuring Papers on Comics Thursday, 1/5 17 – The Queer Posthuman in Speculative Fiction from the Asian Diaspora 112 – Medical Humanities in Contemporary Iberian Studies 140 – Labor in Lusophone Literatures and Cultures Friday, 1/6 211 – Pandemic Childhoods 227 – Gothic Now: Gothic FormsRead More →

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In: 2023, Past Sessions

The Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum will be sponsoring three panels at MLA 2023, 48. Comics and the Making of Queer Communities, 332. Comics and Accessibility, and 738. Comics and Poetry. We will also be hosting an event featuring acclaimed cartoonist Justin Hall at local indie comics publisher Silver Sprocket on Saturday night! Also, check out all the other comics-related panels at this year’s conference. 48 – Comics and the Making of Queer Communities Thursday, 5 January 20231:45 PM – 3:00 PMMoscone West – 3012 (Level 3)Panelists consider how queer comics have been important vehicles for producing queer communities, examining how comics create community byRead More →

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In: 2023, Calls for Papers

Call for papers for a guaranteed session at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention on January 5-8, 2023, in San Francisco, California. This panel is sponsored by the Comics and Graphic Narrative Forum. What can comics tell us about accessibility and visual media? This panel invites papers that consider a range of topics and approaches relating to accessibility and graphic narrative: access needs of comics’ artists and audiences, disability as identity, and the framework of universal design. Universal design, a concept based in architecture and adapted for education, requires that creators begin with the assumption that users have varied access needs rather than makeRead More →

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In: 2023, Calls for Papers

Call for papers for a non-guaranteed session at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention on January 5-8, 2023, in San Francisco, California. This panel is sponsored by the Comics and Graphic Narrative Forum. San Francisco, the site of next year’s convention, has figured prominently in both queer and comic book history, and has been one important site where these histories have intersected. Bay Area comics and cartoonists have been active in LGBTQ activism. Strip AIDS USA (1988) raised money for the Shanti Project in support of people with AIDS. Cartoonist Leslie Ewing organized with the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and the 1993 MarchRead More →

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In: 2022, Past Sessions

In addition to the three panels that the Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum will be sponsoring at MLA 2022, 196. Comics on the Border, 407V. Reading and Translating Comics in Two Directions, and 579. Manga’s Global Influence, there will be a number of other comics-related panels at MLA 2022. Comment on this post if you have any sessions to add! About Comics Thursday, January 6 12V – Graphic Narrative in Spanish: Memory as Transitional Justice 63V – Graphic Narratives and Trauma: Framing the Holocaust 123V – Graphic Narratives and Trauma: Engaging with the German Past Friday, January 7 386V – Graphic Narratives and Trauma: Confronting Sexism and Domestic Violence Sunday, JanuaryRead More →

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In: 2022, Past Sessions

The Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum will be sponsoring three panels at MLA 2022, 196. Comics on the Border, 407V. Reading and Translating Comics in Two Directions, and 579. Manga’s Global Influence. All of this year’s sessions are recognized as presidential theme sessions and speak to the “Multilingual US” conference theme. Also, check out all the other comics-related panels at MLA 2022. 196V – Comics on the Border Friday, 7 January 2022, 8:30 AM – 9:45 AM, virtually Examining comics that contest borders national, cultural, and linguistic in a United States context, speakers emphasize how borders in comics allow for thinking through hybrid and marginalized identities and theRead More →