MLA 2019 call for papers: Graphic Medicine

Call for Papers for a proposed special session at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, Jan. 3-6, 2019, in Chicago, IL. This collaborative panel is jointly sponsored by the Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum and the Medical Humanities and Health Studies Forum.

The 2019 MLA Presidential Theme calls us to look at “textual transactions,” or “the mutually constitutive engagements of human beings, texts, and their contexts.” Critical scholarship in the field of Graphic Medicine has been flourishing, but, as evidenced by the pivotal text in the field, The Graphic Medicine Manifesto, the contextfor Graphic Medicine is predominantly health professions education. In what other contexts do graphic medicine’s textual transactions happen? For example:

· How might graphic medicine narratives be shaping patients’ and informal caregivers’ experiences with professional caregivers and the medical establishment?

· How might they be shaping the embodied experiences of individuals facing illness and/or disability?

· How have graphic narratives transformed the creation and consumption of pathographies, or illness narratives?

Send 250-word abstracts and 2-page CV by 15 March 2018 to Erin Lamb (lambeg@hiram.edu) and Lan Dong (ldong4@uis.edu). Submitters will receive notification of results by April 1.

Please note, this is a proposed, not a guaranteed, session at MLA 2019. It is contingent on approval by the MLA Program Committee. All prospective presenters must be current MLA members by April 2018.

Our panels–and cash bar!!!–at MLA in January, and other comics related events

Panels run by the Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum

Thursday January 4

Connecting the Dots: Museums and Comics

7:00–8:15 p.m., Sutton Center, Hilton

Presiding: Nhora Lucia Serrano, Hamilton C

1. “At Home in the Museum,” Catherine Labio, U of Colorado, Boulder
2. “Paracomics: Art as Comics,” Vasilios Kartalopoulos, New School
3. “Tintin in the World of the Artifact: Authenticity and Artifice, Colonialism and Copyright,” Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, Palomar C
4. “‘There’d Be a Hanging’: Community as Art Gallery, Comic as Museum in Gilbert Hernandez’s Human Diastrophism,” Osvaldo Oyola, New York U

Friday January 5

Teaching Global Arab Comics in the United States

5:15–6:30 p.m., Concourse G, Hilton

Collaborative session—GS Comics and Graphic Narratives and CLCS Global Arab and Arab American.

Presiding: Pauline Homsi Vinson, Diablo Valley C

1. “Teaching and Drawing Boundaries in South-South Collaborations: The Seventh Issue of Lab619 as a Case Study,” Rania Said, Binghamton U, State U of New York

3. “Depicting the Graphic in Abirached’s A Game for Swallows and Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi,” Rachel Norman, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
4. “Palestine at the Crossroads: Teaching Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi as a Mediterranean Comic,” Tera Reid- Olds, U of Oregon

Sunday January 7

Comics and the Culture Wars

8:30–9:45 a.m., Central Park West, Sheraton

Presiding: Aaron Kashtan, U of North Carolina, Charlotte

1. “‘The Truth of Matters’: Transnational Human Diastrophism and the Culture Wars in the Work of Gilbert Hernandez,” Osvaldo Oyola, New York U

2. “Queer Representation in Sandman: Comics in the Culture Wars of the 1990s,” Leah Misemer, Georgia Inst. of Tech.

4. “Super Social Justice Warriors: DC Rebirth’s Green Arrow and the Comic Culture Wars,” Anastasia Salter, U of Central Florida
5. “Queering Captain America: Fandom Rewritings of a Jewish Superhero Icon,” Megan Fowler, U of Florida

The Forum’s Annual Cash Bar!

Time: Friday Jan. 5, 7:15-8:45 p.m.

Location: 1177 Avenue of the Americas, 7^th floor

Please note: this location is a five minute walk due south on 6^th Ave. from the conference hotels.  The building fronts 6^th, it is clearly marked, and the lobby desk will readily direct attendees to the event.  All are welcome!

 

Other panels concerning comics at this year’s MLA

 

Thursday Jan. 4

Global Anglophone: Other Than Fiction

12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., New York Ballroom West, Sheraton

Program arranged by the forum CLCS Global Anglophone

Presiding: Sonali Perera, Hunter C, City U of New York

1. “‘Omiyale’: Nigeria, New Orleans, and the Poetics of Disaster,” Avery Slater, U of Toronto
2. “Caribbean Voices in London,” Peter Miller, U of Virginia
3. “Dalit Graphic Novels: Sites of Dialogue and Dissent,” Ruma Sinha, Syracuse U
4. “Fodder for the Future Canon,” Deepika Bahri, Emory U

Narrativizing Insecurity in Indian Comics

12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Sutton Place, Sheraton

A special session

Presiding: Anuja Madan, Kansas State U

1. “Endangered Species: Exploring the Animacy Hierarchy in Malik Sajad’s Munnu,” Amit Baishya, U of Oklahoma

2. “Mythological Superhero Comics of Counterviolence,” Sharmila Mukherjee, Bronx Community C, City U of New York

3. “Class Inequity and Water Racism in Sarnath Banerjee’s All Quiet in Vikaspuri,” Anuja Madan

Strips of Modernity: Affect, Labor, and Identity in Early Comics

5:15–6:30 p.m., Nassau East, Hilton

A special session

Presiding: Hillary L. Chute, Northeastern U

1. “‘Things Are Going to Be Bad!’: The Emergence of the Working Woman in the Early Comic Strip,” Ksenia Sidorenko, Yale U

2. “A Battle of Wills: The Woodcut Novel and the Politics of Form,” Olivia Badoi, Fordham U
3. “The Queer Tortured State of Prince Valiant,” Eyal Amiran, U of California, Irvine

Respondents: Nhora Lucia Serrano, Hamilton C; Michael Tisserand, author

 

Friday January 5

4H: History, Hamilton, and Hip- Hop in High School

12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Empire Ballroom West, Sheraton

Program arranged by the forum GS Children’s and Young Adult Literature.

Presiding: Jan Christopher Susina, Illinois State U

1. “History in Three Minutes: Interrogating the Uses of Billy Joel’s List Song,” Jennifer A. Low, Florida Atlantic U

2. “21: The Story of Roberto Clemente: Teaching History through Graphic Biography,” Joshua Adams, DePaul U

3. “‘Freedom’ in History: Teaching Beyoncé and Kendrick Lamar’s BET Performance,” Bethany Jacobs, Georgia Inst. of Tech.

4. “Resignifying the Body of History: Hamilton and Hybrid, Subaltern Forms,” Sandra K. Stanley, California State U, Northridge

Graphic Resistance: Comics and Social Protest

1:45–3:00 p.m., New York Ballroom West, Sheraton

A special session

Presiding: Margaret Galvan, U of Florida; Leah Misemer, Georgia Inst. of Tech.

Speakers: Liz Adams, Duke U; José Alaniz, U of Washington, Seattle; Rebecca Giordano, U of Pittsburgh; Susan E. Kirtley, Portland State U; Nicholas Miller, Hollins U; Alexander Ponomaref, U of Massachusetts, Amherst

Saturday January 6

Graphic States of Insecurity

1:45–3:00 p.m., Empire Ballroom East, Sheraton

A special session. Presiding: Jonathan Najarian, Boston U

1. “Making Comics: Word and Image in Nonfiction Narratives,” Josh Neufeld, independent scholar
2. “The Child as Witness in Riad Sattouf ’s The Arab of the Future,” Nima Naghibi, Ryerson U; Andrew O’Malley, Ryerson U

3. “Now and Then: Richard McGuire and Lauren Redniss’s Representational Extremes,” Christopher Spaide, Harvard U

Respondent: Hillary L. Chute, Northeastern U

Ignite Talk: Alison Bechdel on the Page, Onstage, and in Theory

3:30–4:45 p.m., Beekman, Hilton

A special session

Speakers: Leah M. Anderst, Queensborough Community C, City U of New York; Alissa Bourbonnais, U of Washington, Seattle; Judith Gardiner, U of Chicago; Dana A. Heller, Old Dominion U; Robert Hutton, Carleton U; Susan E. Kirtley, Portland State U; Aubrey Mishou, Old Dominion U

Testimonial Turns and Carceral States: The Atermaths and Aterlives of Japanese

American Internment in Asian American Creative Noniction

5:15–6:30 p.m., Chelsea, Sheraton

Program arranged by the forum LLC Asian American

Presiding: Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, U of Connecticut, Willimantic

1. “Graphic Memoir as Visual Testimony: Documenting the Injustice of Japanese Internment in Miné Okubo’s Citizen 13660,” Roberta Wolfson, California State Polytechnic U, San Luis Obispo

3. “Community Means Contained: Internees, Refugees, and Ambivalent Activism,” Timothy Yu, U of Wisconsin, Madison
4. “The Queer Internment Testimonial of Karen Kehoe,” Chris Vials, U of Connecticut, Storrs
5. “Don’t Tell on Mama: Chinese American Memoir in the Confession Era,” Heidi Kim, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Sunday January 7

Mapping Jewish Geographies

10:15–11:30 a.m., Riverside Suite, Sheraton

Program arranged by the forum LLC Jewish American

Presiding: Victoria Aarons, Trinity U

1. “West of the Ghetto: Regionalism and Religion in Emma Wolf ’s Heirs of Yesterday,” Lori Harrison- Kahan, Boston C

2. “Navigation and the Form of Environment in Reznikof’s Jerusalem the Golden,” David Rodriguez, Stony Brook U, State U of New York

3. “Geopolitical Bodies: Reading Insecurity through Jewish Graphic Narratives,” Laini Kavaloski, State U of New York, Canton

Community in the Wake of the Social: Literary Insecurities in Modern and Contemporary Korea

10:15–11:30 a.m., Concourse C, Hilton

Program arranged by the forum LLC Korean

Presiding: Christopher Hanscom, U of California, Los Angeles

1. “‘To a Poet in the South’: Rethinking Community across the Thirty-Eighth Parallel in 1950s–1960s Korea,” Jonathan Kief, U of Michigan, Ann Arbor

2. “Politics of Purity: The Queer Community of ‘Literary Girls’ in Cold War South Korea,” Kyunghee Eo, U of Southern California

3. “Media Convergence as Destabilization: The Transversality of Comics, Web Tunes, and Visual Media Communities in W,” Haerin Shin, Vanderbilt U

Framing New York City in Comics

12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., Madison Square, Sheraton

A special session. Presiding: Robin S. Hammerman, Stevens Inst. of Tech.

1. “Drawn from the Stage: Nineteenth-Century United States Comics and New York City’s Theater Culture,” Alex Beringer, U of Montevallo

2. “Between Strange and Familiar: Old New York in Contemporary Jewish Comics,” Julia Alekseyeva, Harvard U

3. “When Frames Disappear: Gotham City between Violence and Vengeance,” Lisann Anders, U of Zurich

4. “Great American Myths: New York City and Conservative Utopianism,” Joseph Donica, Bronx Community C, City U of New York