Other Comics Panels at the MLA 2015 (Vancouver)

December 12, 2014 by 1 Comment

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Besides the three events—the “Immigration and Comics” panel, the “Comics Theory Roundtable” and the cash bar—sponsored or co-sponsored by our Discussion Group, MLA 2015 in Vancouver will host other sessions devoted to comics or graphic narratives, as well as a number of individual papers that, as far as we are able to tell from the program, connect to the comics studies field.

Please find these sessions listed below.

 

Enjoy!


The Graphic South (session 35)

Thursday, 8 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 114, VCC West 

Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Southern Literature

Presiding: Katherine Renee Henninger, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge

 

  1. “The Contested Topography of the Reconstructed South: Visual Poetics in the Works of Jedediah Hotchkiss and Nathaniel Southgate Shaler,” Robert Arbour, Indiana Univ., Bloomington
  2. “Stuck Rubber Baby and the Intersections of Civil Rights Historical Memory,” Julie Buckner Armstrong, Univ. of South Florida
  3. “How to Draw an Animal in the Sensible South: William Bartram’s Natural History of Compassion,” Thomas Doran, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara
  4. “Graphic (Un)Being: Swamping the Deleuzian Body without Organs in Contemporary Comics (Swamp Thing, Swamp Preacher, and Bayou),” Taylor Hagood, Florida Atlantic Univ.; Daniel Cross Turner, Coastal Carolina Univ.

 

The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World
 (session 41)

Thursday, 8 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., 202, VCC West

A special session

Presiding: Daniel W. Worden, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque

 

Speakers: Lan Dong, Univ. of Illinois, Springfield; Ann D’Orazio, Univ. of New Mexico, Albuquerque; Jared Gardner, Ohio State Univ., Columbus; Maureen Shay, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
Responding: David M. Ball, Princeton Univ.

 

Session Description:
The roundtable brings together established and emerging scholars in comics studies to discuss an acclaimed contemporary comics artist, Joe Sacco. The discussion focuses on Sacco’s significance to both literary and comics studies, as well as the challenges that his “comics journalism” poses to the categories and methods of analysis in comics studies.

 

Nationalism and Historical Memory in Global Graphic Fiction (session 91)

Thursday, 8 January, 3:30–4:45 p.m., 9, VCC East

A special session

Presiding: Christopher Brian Conway, Univ. of Texas, Arlington

 

  1. “Life Writing, History, and We Are Still at War,” Jose Alaniz, Univ. of Washington, Seattle
  2. “Nationalistic Anxiety: Remembering Jacques Tardi’s Adèle Blance-Sec,” Nhora Lucia Serrano, Harvard Univ.
  3. “Mestizaje and Anticolonialism in the Mexican Western,” Christopher Brian Conway, Univ. of Texas, Arlington

 

Zionism and the Novel (session 201)

Friday, 9 January, 8:30–9:45 a.m., 224, VCC West

A special session

Presiding: Russell A. Berman, Stanford Univ.

 

  1. “Bioregions and Nation Building in Daniel Deronda,” Sophie Christman-Lavin, Stony Brook Univ., State Univ. of New York
  2. “Zionism in the Novels of Leon Uris, Philip Roth, and Michael Chabon,” Michael Kotzin, independent scholar
  3. “Zionism and the Graphic Novel: Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds and the Development of a Genre,” Naomi B. Sokoloff, Univ. of Washington, Seattle

 

Virtual Women: Webcomics (session 654)

Sunday, 11 January, 8:30–9:45 a.m., 3, VCC East

A special session

Presiding: Leah Misemer, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison

 

  1. “‘Straw Feminists’: Webcomics, Parody, and Intertextuality,” Sarah Sillin, Univ. of Maryland, College Park
  2. “Ménage à 3: Gender and Sexual Diversity through Women’s Perspectives,” Nicole Slipp, Queen’s Univ.
  3. “One Click Wonder: How Female Comics Creators Leapt from Private to Public in a Single Bound,” Aimee Valentine, Western Michigan Univ.
Responding: Hillary L. Chute, Univ. of Chicago

 

Filed under 2015, Other Comics Events @ MLA

MLA 2014—The Graphic Nineteenth Century

January 1, 2014 by Leave a comment

The MLA Annual Convention for 2014 takes place in Chicago next week, from Jan. 9th to 12th! We of the Discussion Group on Comics and Graphic Narratives are pleased to help promote, in addition to our own programming, the following session organized and put on by our colleagues in the Division on Nineteenth-Century American Literature:

773. The Graphic Nineteenth Century

Sunday, 12 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m.

Michigan–Michigan State, Chicago Marriott

Presiding: Augusta Rohrbach, Washington State Univ., Pullman

“The Graphic 19th Century” reframes the print explosion of the era as a revolution in graphic narratives, treating the relationship between word and image as a distinct innovation of the period marked by The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck (1842), the first graphic novel published in the United States, and graphic work popularized in periodicals from Harper’s Weekly to Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. This panel revises critical commonplaces that link the explosion of print media with the impact of the photographic image; rather, panelists will interrogate the dialogic relationship between word and image, finding a myriad of results beyond what Isabelle Lehuu (2000) aptly called “the carnival on the page.” Papers in this session seek to redefine the field through a coordinated focus on the interaction of form and formats. Each paper focuses on a different generic form out of which both word and image emerge. Together the papers demonstrate combinations of word and image beyond the range of possibilities typically taken up in earlier studies of the period; in addition,they offer new considerations of 19th-century print culture as extending across race, gender and age, and ability.

1. “A Slave Is Being Beaten: Word, Image, and the Subject of The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb“

Laura Ruth Saltz, Colby Coll.

This paper focuses on the prefabricated woodcuts featured in the nonfiction narrative The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb (1849), exploring the tension between the text’s first-person narrative—known within the tradition of the slave narrative for its radical expression of agency—and Bibb’s use of printers’ woodcuts instead of original illustrations. Here unoriginal images are used for a very original purpose, conveying complex and multivalent modes of agency.

2. “Geography and Tactile Graphics for the Blind”

David Weimer, Harvard Univ.

This paper further explores multivalent modes of word and image by considering atlases of the 1830s and ’40s developed for the blind. It compares two atlases from the early nineteenth-century US—one for the blind, Samuel Gridley Howe’s Atlas of the Principal Islands of the Globe (1838), and one for the sighted, Howe’s Atlas of the United States (1837)—as against Jedidiah Morse’s widely used Atlas to Morse’s New School Geography (1822). Using these graphics for the blind, the paper seeks to defamiliarize the relationship between word and image, and thus better analyze how words and graphics combine (or may not) in maps and other printed media. These graphics for the blind provide a peripheral but illuminating example of how nineteenth-century writers thought about the power of images and their wordy supplements.

3. “‘The Girl Who Inked Herself’: The Graphic Design of Female Literacy in Picture-Book Form”

Elizabeth Pope, American Antiquarian Society

This last paper turns to children’s literature, arguing that a picture book’s graphic narrative may not complement a written text but rather compete with its message. In the picture book The Girl Who Inked Herself and Her Books, and How It Ended (c. 1859), the illustrations dominate the first page, swallowing up the text. Having the whole story laid out visually on the first page means that “How it Ended” is prefigured from the start. The reader is forced to catch up with the text of the story on the next page in order to learn an ending that the viewer already knows. This paper shows how the format of picture books signals that visual lessons are just as important as the text, if not more so.

For an overview of all MLA 2014 sessions organized by the Discussion Group on Comics and Graphic Narratives, see here. For a full listing of other comics-related sessions at MLA 2014, see here.

Filed under 2014, Abstracts, Other Comics Events @ MLA

Other Comics Studies Events @ MLA 2014

October 28, 2013 by Leave a comment

Program for the 129th MLA Annual Convention, Chicago, 9-12 January 2014

Besides the four events—the three panels and the cash bar—sponsored or co-sponsored by our Discussion Group, MLA 2014 in Chicago will host two other sessions devoted comics or graphic narratives, as well as a number of individual papers that, as far as we are able to tell from the program, connect to the comics studies field. While the amount of comics-themed programming this time around does not appear to match the record high set in 2012, work on comics remains an important part of the MLA—and of course our Group is doing all it can to encourage that trend!

Unfortunately, the MLA’s searchable online program does not include the search term comics or graphic narratives in its drop-down menus, and, while it is possible to type those words, or any words, into the search box, not every panel or paper related to comics studies is necessarily labeled as such. We’ve found the search results to be, er, inexact. Hence skimming through the entire program remains the surest way to find all the comics-themed events at the convention. We’ve done that—and, as part of our continual effort to spread the word about comics studies at MLA, we offer the following information.

First, here are the other two comics studies panels at the convention:

563. Postcolonial Graphic Memoirs

Saturday, 11 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Erie, Sheraton Chicago

Program arranged by the Division on Autobiography, Biography, and Life Writing

Presiding: Linda Haverty Rugg, Univ. of California, Berkeley

  1. “Malamine, un africain à Paris: A Closer Look at Contemporary Postcolonial Unbelonging,” Michelle Bumatay, Univ. of California, Los Angeles
  2. “Self-Construction of a Transnational Feminine Identity in an Andean Context: Power Paola’s Virus Tropical,” Felipe Gómez, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
  3. “Drawing Memories, Visualizing Texts: Transnational Belonging in GB Tran’s Vietnamerica,” Lan Dong, Univ. of Illinois, Springfield
  4. “Illustrating Alternate Narratives: Unconsumable Racialized Bodies of Young Women in Half World and Skim,” Michelle O’Brien, Univ. of British Columbia

773. The Graphic Nineteenth Century

Sunday, 12 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Michigan–Michigan State, Chicago Marriott

Program arranged by the Division on Nineteenth-Century American Literature

Presiding: Augusta Rohrbach, Washington State Univ., Pullman

  1. “A Slave Is Being Beaten: Word, Image, and the Subject of The Life and Adventures of Henry Bibb,” Laura Ruth Saltz, Colby Coll.
  2. “Geography and Tactile Graphics for the Blind,” David Weimer, Harvard Univ.
  3. “‘The Girl Who Inked Herself’: The Graphic Design of Female Literacy in Picture-Book Form,” Elizabeth Pope, American Antiquarian Soc.

Secondly, following is a list of panels that include individual papers related (or potentially related) to comics studies. These are papers that appear to focus on cartooning, comics, or graphic narratives, or material adapted from same, but that occur in the context of sessions organized around other topics. We’ve listed the entire panels here, with the possibly comics-related papers printed in red.

We hope we haven’t missed any comics-related sessions or papers. If you think we have (or if we’ve misrepresented your work), please drop us a comment here so that we can correct our mistake. Thanks! We hope these lists prove helpful as you plan out your MLA experience.

36. Women and the Language and Literature of Human Rights

Thursday, 9 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Kane, Chicago Marriott

Program arranged by the Division on Women’s Studies in Language and Literature

Presiding: Susan G. O’Malley, Kingsborough Community Coll., City Univ. of New York

  1. “‘I Write the Broken Line’: Discursive Truth Telling in Antjie Krog’s Country of My Skull,” Alaina Kaus, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
  2. “Speaking Freedom’s Language: United States Multicultural Literature and Human Rights Talk in an Emerging Democracy,” Amy K. Levin, Northern Illinois Univ.
  3. “Beyond Revolution: The Fiction of Individual Sovereignty in Persepolis,” Belinda Walzer, Wake Forest Univ.

84. Latino/a Chicago

Thursday, 9 January, 3:30–4:45 p.m., Missouri, Sheraton Chicago

A special session

Presiding: Alberto Varon, Indiana Univ., Bloomington

  1. “Amor y Chisme: Melodramatic Mexican Chicago in Porque el amor manda and Sandra Cisneros’s Caramelo,” Olga Herrera, Univ. of Saint Thomas, MN
  2. “The Untold Midwestern Puerto Rican Story in Fred Arroyo’s Western Avenue and Other Fictions,” Marisel C. Moreno, Univ. of Notre Dame
  3. “Brown and Down in Hyde Park: Wilfred Santiago’s In My Darkest Hour,” William Orchard, Queens Coll., City Univ. of New York

173. Beyond the Protomonograph: New Models for the Dissertation

Thursday, 9 January, 7:00–8:15 p.m., Northwestern–Ohio State, Chicago Marriott

A special session

Presiding: Daniel Powell, Univ. of Victoria

Speakers: Melissa A. Dalgleish, York Univ.; Shawn Moore, Texas A&M Univ., College Station; James O’Sullivan, University Coll. Cork; Nick Sousanis, Columbia Univ.; Danielle Spinosa, York Univ.; Nicholas van Orden, Univ. of Alberta

Session Description:

Although the need for graduate education reform in the humanities is widely discussed, the traditional role of the dissertation as a capstone protomonograph has only begun to be questioned. This panel features six Pecha Kucha presentations (20 slides x 20 seconds) from graduate students developing radically new models of the dissertation, followed by ample discussion.

(Note: Speaker Nick Sousanis is currently writing and drawing his dissertation in comic book form.)

248. Space and Belonging in Post-9/11 US American Literature

Friday, 10 January, 10:15–11:30 a.m., Purdue-Wisconsin, Chicago Marriott

A special session

Presiding: Karolina Golimowska, Univ. of Richmond; David Rose, Humboldt-Universität

  1. “Writer for Mayor: Jonathan Lethem, Norman Mailer, and Post-9/11 New York,” Jeffrey Severs, Univ. of British Columbia
  2. “Smoking on the Streets of New York: Art Spiegelman as ‘Rooted Cosmopolitan’ in the Shadow of September 11,” Jeffrey Clapp, Univ. of California, Irvine
  3. “Meditations on Terror: Mahvish Rukhsana Khan’s My Guantanamo Diary,” Manori Neelika Jayawardane, State Univ. of New York, Oswego

291. Torture and Popular Culture

Friday, 10 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Indiana-Iowa, Chicago Marriott

Program arranged by the Division on Popular Culture [Note that our Group’s Hillary Chute is presiding, and our frequent MLA colleague Chris Pizzino is presenting! Sure to be a great, challenging panel.]

Presiding: Hillary L. Chute, Univ. of Chicago

  1. “Shocking Media: The Abu Ghraib Photographs and Zero Dark Thirty,” Liz Maynes-Aminzade, Harvard Univ.
  2. “Animal Cruelty: The Cinema of Kathryn Bigelow,” Christopher Pizzino, Univ. of Georgia
  3. “Torture, Rebirth, and Revelation in V for Vendetta and Save the Green Planet,” Peter Yoonsuk Paik, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
  4. “Sites of Pain: The Expressive Work of Spaces of Torture in Video Games,” Mark Sample, George Mason Univ.

302. Reimagining Nation in the Wake of Disaster

Friday, 10 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Arkansas, Sheraton Chicago

Program arranged by the Division on East Asian Languages and Literatures after 1900

Presiding: Melek Ortabasi, Simon Fraser Univ., Surrey

  1. “Other Sides of Indonesia’s Mud Volcano: Victims, Disaster, and the Politics of Representation,” Phillip Drake, Univ. of Chicago
  2. “Nausicaa’s Insect Flute: Calling Out Azuma,” Margherita R. Long, Univ. of California, Riverside
  3. “Volcanic Eruption and Peninsular Politics: Representations of Mount Baekdu in Contemporary South Korea,” Adrian Thieret, Stanford Univ.
  4. “From Cosmic Fear to New Media Citizenship: The Making of National Space in Chinese Disaster Film,” Wei Yang, Univ. of the South, Sewanee

317. Narrative and Language Theory

Friday, 10 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Michigan B, Sheraton Chicago

Program arranged by the Division on Language Theory

Presiding: Lee B. Abraham, Columbia Univ.

  1. “The Use of the Demonstratives This/These and That/Those in Conversational English Narratives,” Paul J. Hopper, Carnegie Mellon Univ.
  2. “Framing Narrative Genres: From Words to Worldview,” Michael Sinding, Vrije Univ.
  3. “A Systemic-Functional Approach to Genre in Short-Form Graphic Narratives,” Jonathan R. Bass, Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick

Responding: Jiyoung Yoon, Univ. of North Texas

343. A Right to Gun Violence: Armed Citizens and Criminal Others in American Popular Narrative

Friday, 10 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Huron, Chicago Marriott

A special session

Presiding: Louis Sherman, Univ. of Utah

  1. “Little House and the Long Rifle: Laura Ingalls Wilder and the Anxiety of Armed Independence,” Louis Sherman
  2. “Black Power and the Right to Bear Arms,” Mai-Linh Hong, Univ. of Virginia
  3. “‘We Have a Hulk’: The Superhuman as Substitute for Guns in Superhero Cinema,” Andrew Friedenthal, Univ. of Texas, Austin

Responding: Alan Nadel, Univ. of Kentucky

437. Diaries of the Young Girl: The Craft of Female Selfhood

Saturday, 11 January, 8:30–9:45 a.m., Indiana-Iowa, Chicago Marriott

Program arranged by the Division on Children’s Literature

Presiding: June S. Cummins, San Diego State Univ.; Rocío G. Davis, City Univ. of Hong Kong

  1. “Writing to Survive: Child-Writing Characterization in Sade Adeniran’s Imagine This,” Suzanne Ondrus, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs
  2. “Constructing the Self: Pocket Diaries as Discipline in Nineteenth-Century America,” Martha L. Sledge, Marymount Manhattan Coll.
  3. “‘Okay! Fine! You Can Read It!’: Memory, Adolescence, and Belonging in Lauren Weinstein’s Girl Stories,” Tahneer Oksman, Marymount Manhattan Coll.
  4. “Witness, Re-vision, and the Constraints of Child Authorship in Nadja Halilbegovic’s My Childhood under Fire: A Sarajevo Diary,” Anastasia Ulanowicz, Univ. of Florida

463. New Arabic Genres

Saturday, 11 January, 8:30–9:45 a.m., Colorado, Sheraton Chicago

Program arranged by the Division on Arabic Literature and Culture

Presiding: Ken Seigneurie, Simon Fraser Univ., Surrey

  1. “Revolutionary Memoirs: Women, Nation, and the Arab World,” Tahia Abdel Nasser, American Univ. in Cairo
  2. “Scheherazadean Cyborgs: Arab Women Diarists in the Digital Age,” Nadine Sinno, Georgia State Univ.
  3. “Desire and the Canonization of Arabic Literature,” Kifah Hanna, Trinity Coll., CT
  4. “Illustrated War: Lamia Ziadé’s Bye Bye Babylon, the Art of Remembering, and the Lebanese Civil War,” Salah D. Hassan, Michigan State Univ.

For abstracts, visit tinyurl.com/c65bllb.

519. Thinking Fanlation

Saturday, 11 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Michigan B, Sheraton Chicago

Program arranged by the Discussion Group on Translation and the Division on East Asian Languages and Literatures after 1900

Presiding: Sergio Waisman, George Washington Univ.

  1. “Scanlators like Us: Reading Community Ethics from Scanlated Manga,” Ayse Gursoy, Univ. of Texas, Austin
  2. “The Manipulation of Translator Involvement in Fansubbing,” Chia-hui Liao, National Formosa Univ.
  3. “The Brief Wild Days of Anime Fansubbing,” Samuel Malissa, Yale Univ.

540. Cross-Cultural Dialogues

Saturday, 11 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Superior A, Sheraton Chicago

Program arranged by the Division on Comparative Studies in Twentieth-Century Literature.

Presiding: Olakunle George, Brown Univ.

  1. “Odd Jobs: Malinky Robot and Malay Precarity in Singapore,” Aimee Bahng, Dartmouth Coll.
  2. “Letters from the Dead: Incendies and the Legacies of the Lebanese Civil War,” Salah D. Hassan, Michigan State Univ.
  3. “Transnational Capital, Branding, and Migrating Genres in New South African Urban Fiction,” Loren Kruger, Univ. of Chicago
  4. “Relationality: What Is It About?” Rajagopalan Radhakrishnan, Univ. of California, Irvine

572. Illness and Disability Memoir as Embodied Knowledge

Saturday, 11 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Los Angeles–Miami, Chicago Marriott

Program arranged by the MLA Committee on Disability Issues in the Profession

Presiding: Rachel Adams, Columbia Univ.

  1. “Recoding Silence: Teresa de Cartagena, Medieval Sign Lexicons, and Deaf Life Writing,” Jonathan H. Hsy, George Washington Univ.
  2. “‘Twisted and Deformed’: Virginia Woolf, Alison Bechdel, and Crip-Feminist Autobiography,” Cynthia Barounis, Washington Univ. in St. Louis
  3. “‘My Worry Now Accumulates’: Sensorial and Emotional Contagion in Autistic Life Writing,” Ralph James Savarese, Grinnell Coll.

For papers or abstracts, write to rea15@columbia.edu after 1 Jan.

625. Verbal and Visual Satire in the Nineteenth Century

Saturday, 11 January, 5:15–6:30 p.m., Chicago F, Chicago Marriott

A special session

Presiding: Joseph Litvak, Tufts Univ.

  1. “Organizing Anarchy: Class, Intellectual Property, and Graphic Satire,” Jason Kolkey, Loyola Univ., Chicago
  2. “The Reemergence of Radical Satire in the Late Nineteenth Century,” Frank A. Palmeri, Univ. of Miami
  3. “Turn-of-the-Century Satirical Plots of Fenian and Anarchist Terrorism,” Jennifer Malia, American Univ. of Sharjah

636. Kafka’s Experiments with Alternative Realities

Saturday, 11 January, 5:15–6:30 p.m., Sheraton I, Sheraton Chicago

A special session

Presiding: Marie Luise Caputo-Mayr, Temple Univ., Philadelphia

Speakers: Sandra Fluhrer, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich; Lynn M. Kutch, Kutztown Univ.; Matthew T. Lau, Queensborough Community Coll., City Univ. of New York; Imke Meyer, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago; Lara Pehar, Univ. of Toronto; Alfred Thomas, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago

Responding: Dagmar C. G. Lorenz, Univ. of Illinois, Chicago

For abstracts, visit www.kafkasocietyofamerica.org.

Session Description:

Kafka’s works as historical documents, pointing to contemporary issues, replete with allusions to them, offering “alternative realities” at the intersection of the human-animal (dogs, horses, mice) and human-object world (Odradek) and other transient moments (alienating “imaginary” America, Russia). Utopia, the obscure language, the comic; novel and educational theories; Bohemia.

(Note: Speaker Lynn Kutch will be talking about comics adaptations of Kafka’s Die Verwandlung [The Metamorphosis] and the larger issue of adaptation in the study of literary graphic novels.)

720. Gendered Age and Authority in Popular Culture

Sunday, 12 January, 10:15–11:30 a.m., Erie, Sheraton Chicago

A special session

Presiding: Elizabeth L. Gregory, Univ. of Houston, University Park

  1. “Public Activism and Girlhood Agency: Malala Yousafzai in United States Media Coverage and Graphic Narrative,” Tracy Lemaster, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison
  2. “When the Daughters of the Republic Became Terrorists: Kemalist Women in Turkish Popular Media,” Rustem Ertug Altinay, New York Univ.
  3. “Why Is the Future So Young? Gender and Age in Elizabeth Moon’s Remnant Population,” Christy Tidwell, South Dakota School of Mines and Tech.

For abstracts, write to egregory@uh.edu.

746. War Media and the Militarization of Experience

Sunday, 12 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Ontario, Sheraton Chicago

A special session

Presiding: Ross Etherton, Univ. of Colorado, Boulder

  1. “The Killing Tele-presence: Realizing Targets in Drone Warfare,” Jan Claas van Treeck, Yale Univ.
  2. “Drone Art: Disturbances and Disorientations,” Jennifer Rhee, Virginia Commonwealth Univ.
  3. “Frames, Firearms, and Funny Pages: Graphic Engagements with Precarious Life,” Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, Univ. of California, Santa Barbara

Responding: Jan Mieszkowski, Reed Coll.

For session description, abstracts, and biographies, visit warmediamla.blogspot.com/.

Filed under 2014, Other Comics Events @ MLA Tagged with ,

CFP: The Graphic 19th Century (MLA 2014)

March 13, 2013 by Leave a comment

Töpffer's Obadiah Oldbuck (New York, c. 1842), courtesy of the Dartmouth Digital Library Program

Call for Papers for a panel at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, 9-12 Jan. 2014, in Chicago. Sponsored by the MLA Division on Nineteenth-Century American Literature.

The MLA Discussion Group on Comics and Graphic Narratives is pleased to announce this panel for MLA 2014 organized by its sister entity, the Division on the Nineteenth-Century American Literature.

The explosion of print media in the 19th century has become a critical commonplace; the impact of photographic images on the period been studied extensively. We invite submissions that take up the combination of word and image, as in The Adventures of Mr. Obadiah Oldbuck (1842), the first graphic novel published in the United States, and graphic work popularized in periodicals from Harper’s Weekly to Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper. Abstracts by Mar. 15 to Augusta Rohrbach (augustrohrbach [at] gmail [dot] com) and Hillary Chute (chute [at] uchicago [dot] edu).

Filed under Allied Organizations, Calls for Papers, Other Comics Events @ MLA

Other Comics Studies Events @ MLA 2013 (updated)

December 26, 2012 by 6 Comments

Program for the 128th MLA Annual Convention, Boston, 3-6 January 2013

Updated, 26 Dec. 2012: Besides the three panels and the cash bar (!) sponsored by our Discussion Group (i.e. the Comics and Graphic Narratives Group), MLA 2013 in Boston will host several other sessions dedicated or strongly related to comics studies, as well as many individual papers that, as far as we can tell from the program, relate to the field. Though the number of comics-themed events this time around does not quite match the all-time high set by last year, interest in comics at the MLA obviously remains strong—a hopeful sign for the future!

Sadly, the MLA’s searchable online program does not include the search term comics or graphic narratives in its drop-down menus, and, though it is possible to type those words (or any words) into the search field, not every panel or paper related to comics studies is necessarily labeled as such. So, skimming through the entire program remains the surest way to find all the comics-themed events at the convention. We’ve done that—and, in hopes of spreading the word about comics scholarship at MLA, we offer the following two lists.

The first list, Other Comics Studies Panels, consists of entire sessions either clearly devoted to or declaring a substantial interest in graphic narrative. By substantial interest we mean that the session either includes more than one paper definitely focused on comics and/or spotlights “comics” or “graphic narrative” in its title. Some of these panels are special (i.e. ad hoc and independent) sessions, while others are sponsored by standing MLA Divisions or allied organizations.

The second list, Individual Papers on Comics, consists of single papers that appear to focus on comics, cartooning, or visual narrative but within sessions organized around other topics. These we’ve listed by session and paper title, without listing all the other paper topics involved in these sessions.

We hope we haven’t missed any comics studies sessions or papers. If you think we have (or if we’ve misrepresented your work), please drop us a comment here so that we can correct our mistake. Thanks! We hope these lists prove helpful as you plan out your MLA experience.
…

Other Comics Studies Panels:

90. Paintings and Photographs Remediated in Film, Graphic Narrative, and Newspaper

Thursday, 3 January, 3:30–4:45 p.m., Riverway, Sheraton Boston

Program arranged by the International Society for the Study of Narrative and the American Comparative Literature Association

Presiding: Emma Kafalenos, Washington Univ. in St. Louis; Lois Parkinson Zamora, Univ. of Houston

  1. “The Remediation of Painting within Cinematic Narrative Discourse,” David Henry Richter, Queens Coll., City Univ. of New York
  2. “Remediated Photographs and Reconstructed Memories: Personal and Familial Pasts in Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” Genie Giaimo, Northeastern Univ.
  3. “Front-Page Ekphrasis,” Lisa Zunshine, Univ. of Kentucky

623. Gender(ed) Performativities in Latin American and Latina/o Graphic Novels

Saturday, 5 January, 5:15–6:30 p.m., Room 205, Hynes Convention Center

Program arranged by the Division on Twentieth-Century Latin American Literature

Presiding: Hilda Chacón, Nazareth Coll. of Rochester

  1. “Unbecoming Cuban American: Representations of Female Subjectivity in Bad Habits: A Love Story, by Cristy Road,” Irune del Rio Gabiola, Butler Univ.
  2. “Ashes and Masks: Gender according to Gilbert Hernandez,” Christopher Pizzino, Univ. of Georgia
  3. “Trans-nepantlista Visual Geographies and the Inked Latina Body: Ana Mendieta’s Graphic Life Writing,” Emma Ruth García, Colby Coll.; Magdalena M. Maiz-Peña, Davidson Coll.

676. Re–Understanding Comics

Sunday, 6 January, 8:30–9:45 a.m., Gardner, Sheraton Boston

A special session

Presiding: Margaret Galvan, Graduate Center, City Univ. of New York

  1. “The Citational Uses and Abuses of Understanding Comics and the Scholarly Futures They Forecast,” Michael Chaney, Dartmouth Coll.
  2. “Living Lines: Comics as a Phenomenological Encounter,” David Bahr, Borough of Manhattan Community Coll., City Univ. of New York
  3. “Drawing on Theory,” Samantha Close, Univ. of Southern California

Responding: Charles Hatfield, California State Univ., Northridge

709. Picturing Photography in Graphic Memoirs

Sunday, 6 January, 10:15–11:30 a.m., Berkeley, Sheraton Boston

A special session

Presiding: Courtney Baker, Connecticut Coll.

  1. “The Queer Contest between Modern and Postmodern Modes of Vision in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home,” Robin Bernstein, Harvard Univ.
  2. “Drawn Photographs and the Performance of (Post)Memory in Carol Tyler’s You’ll Never Know,” Mihaela Precup, Univ. of Bucharest
  3. “‘I Saw It’: The Photographic Witness of Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen,” Laura Wexler, Yale Univ.

790. Comics, Moving Images, and Intermedial Criticism

Sunday, 6 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Gardner, Sheraton Boston

Program arranged by the Division on Film

Presiding: Nicholas Sammond, Univ. of Toronto; Paul D. Young, Vanderbilt Univ.

  1. “Autobiographical Constructions: Authorial Absence and Presence in Julie Doucet and Michel Gondry’s My New New York Diary,” Frederik Køhlert, Univ. of Montreal
  2. “Avatar: The Last Airbender and Shifting Intermedial Spaces,” Sandra K. Stanley, California State Univ., Northridge
  3. “Spiegelman’s Home Movie: Art at Auschwitz,” Brad Prager, Univ. of Missouri, Columbia

In addition to these panels on comics studies, we’d like to highlight a session on another, possibly related topic chaired by our Comics and Graphic Narratives colleague Hillary Chute:

361. Video Games

Sunday, 6 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Gardner, Sheraton Boston

Program arranged by the Division on Popular Culture

Presiding: Hillary L. Chute, Univ. of Chicago

  1. “Playful Aesthetics,” Mary Flanagan, Dartmouth Coll.
  2. “Losing the Game: Gamification and the Procedural Aesthetics of Systemic Failure,” Patrick Jagoda, Univ. of Chicago
  3. “Acoustemologies of the Closet: The Wizard, the Troll, and the Fortress,” William Cheng, Harvard Univ.

…

Individual Papers on Comics:

59. Francophonies numérisées / Digital Francophonies

Thursday, 3 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Room 301, Hynes Convention Center

3. “Bandes dessinées téléchargeables: Un nouveau moyen de mesurer la diffusion de la langue française au 21ème siècle,” Henri-Simon Blanc-Hoang, Defense Lang. Inst.

72. Representing Genocide and Civil Conflict in Nonfiction Narrative

Thursday, 3 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., The Fens, Sheraton Boston

4. “Graphic Conflict: War and Genocide in Sequential Art,” Susan Jacobowitz, Queensborough Community Coll., City Univ. of New York

154. Teaching Arab Novels in English

Thursday, 3 January, 7:00–8:15 p.m., Room 307, Hynes Convention Center

2. “Intersections of Word and Image: The Lebanese Civil War in Graphic Form,” Carol N. Fadda-Conrey, Syracuse Univ.

178. Larger Than Life: Southern Heroes

Thursday, 3 January, 7:00–8:15 p.m., Beacon F, Sheraton Boston

2. “From the Old South to the New Frontier: Civil Rights, Black Masculinity, and Regional Superheroes in The American Way,” Brannon Costello, Louisiana State Univ., Baton Rouge

220. Image, Voice, Text: Canadian Literature

Friday, 4 January, 8:30–9:45 a.m., Beacon D, Sheraton Boston

3. “Aboriginal New Media: Alternative Forms of Storytelling,” Sarah Henzi, Univ. of Montreal

Presenter Sarah Henzi, in her comment posted here on Dec. 21st, notes, “I will be discussing the Graphic Novel in the context of Aboriginal/Native Literature.” Thank you, Sarah!

268. Disability Discourses: Bodily Selves and the Embodiment of Deviance

Friday, 4 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Hampton, Sheraton Boston

3. “Drawing Disability in Japanese Manga: Visual Politics, Cultural Attitudes, and Wheelchair Basketball in Inoue Takahiko’s Real,” Andrea Wood, Winona State Univ.

444. The Kafka Factor in Post-Holocaust Film and Literature

Saturday, 5 January, 8:30–9:45 a.m., Room 313, Hynes Convention Center

This roundtable on “the influence of Kafka’s work on post-1945 literature, graphic art, and film” promises to include discussion of “graphic art by Bechdel, Satrapi, Shaun Tan, and Yang.” The website for the session’s sponsoring organization, the Kafka Society, clarifies, stating that participant Susan Jacobowitz of Queensborough Community College, CUNY (who is also presenting a paper on comics in panel 72, above) will speak on

new aspects of the Kafka factor in five award-winning graphic works that engage with Kafka’s works and transcend disciplinary boundaries. Two of them are films. They explore themes such as Kafka’s criticism of family and society, alienation, persecution, and the grotesque struggle with bureaucracy. Shaun Tan’s “The Arrival” (2006) features frightening and wondrous visuals without text. A. Bechdel’s “Fun Home. A Family Tragicomic” (2006) revolves around a dysfunctional family; G. L. Yang’s “American Born Chinese” (2006) thematizes fitting in and dual identity; M. Satrapi’s “Persepolis” (film 2007) illustrates an exiled Iranian girl’s experiences in Vienna and Paris; A. Folman’s “Waltz with Bashir” (film 2008 and book 2009), explores personal experiences of the Holocaust generation and the filmmaker’s involvement in the Palestinian conflict.

680. Imagining Paradise: Nature, Ecology, and Culture in Kashmiri Literature

Sunday, 6 January, 8:30–9:45 a.m., Room 209, Hynes Convention Center

3. “Kashmir Pending: Kashmiri Militancy, Adolescence, and a Graphic Novel,” Patrick Colm Hogan, Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs

747. Oscar Wilde in Print and Visual Culture

Sunday, 6 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Jefferson, Sheraton Boston

1. “Late Victorian Publicity: Oscar Wilde from The Artist to Punch,” Loretta A. Clayton, Macon State Coll.

770. New Perspectives on Emotion and Narrative across Media

Sunday, 6 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Beacon D, Sheraton Boston

3. “Empathy and Shared Feeling in Visual Narratives,” Jo Kremer, Yale Univ.

Filed under 2013, Other Comics Events @ MLA

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