Margaret Galvan

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 →

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 →

MLA 2022 Non-Guaranteed Session CFP: Comics on the Border (DEADLINE: 3/15/2021) Call for Papers for a proposed non-guaranteed roundtable sponsored by the Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum to be held (if accepted) at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, Jan. 6-9, 2022, in Washington D.C. Comics are defined by borders in formal representation and structure, in the boundaries between word and image and generic categories, in the networks and communities of mainstream and alternative production and circulation. Beyond questions of form—borders created by panels and gutters—and audience—borders around communities of readership—borders materially contain, constrict, and dominate identities.  In Disaster Drawn, Hillary Chute considers theRead More →

MLA 2022 Collaborative/Non-Guaranteed Session CFP: Reading and Translating Comics in Two Directions (DEADLINE: 3/15/2021) Call for Papers for a proposed special session at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, Jan. 6-9, 2022, in Washington D.C. This collaborative panel is jointly sponsored by the Arabic Forum and the Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum. The 2022 MLA Presidential Theme calls us to look at “multilingual US,” and “make language a tool of inclusion rather than exclusion.” Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, and the “Maghreb” are the main producers of comics and graphic narratives today. Comics have become very popular among Middle Eastern writers and artists, such as: ZeinaRead More →

MLA 2022 Guaranteed Session CFP: Manga’s Global Influence (DEADLINE: 3/15/2021) Call for Papers for a guaranteed roundtable panel sponsored by the Forum for Comics and Graphic Narratives at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, January 6-9, 2022 in Washington, DC. Though conversations about comics have frequently replicated the silos of the academy by discussing one national tradition at a time, scholars have begun paying attention to how, as print and digital objects, comics readily cross national borders. The tradition of manga in Japan is one of the oldest and largest comics traditions, encompassing a multitude of genres and audiences, and this status has ledRead More →

New Flashpoints in Comics History Call for Papers for a guaranteed roundtable panel sponsored by the Forum for Comics and Graphic Narratives at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, January 7-10, 2021 in Toronto, ON. “For all the vibrant scholarship emerging around comics today, the medium remains a largely unplumbed and uncanonized field of texts you’ve never heard of.” —Ramzi Fawaz, “A Queer Sequence: Comics as a Disruptive Medium” (2019) Certain moments in comics have been regarded as pivotal in our histories and often bear repeating in scholarship, including R. Crumb’s shaping of the underground and subsequent movements through publishing Zap Comix in 1968;Read More →