Transitions 5: Call for Papers

TRANSITIONS 5 – New Directions in Comics Studies

Saturday October 25th 2014 at Birkbeck, University of London

Call for Papers

Keynote: Dr. Jason Dittmer (UCL, Captain America & the Nationalist Superhero)

Respondent: Dr. Roger Sabin, Central Saint Martins, Comics, Comix & Graphic Novels)

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for the forthcoming 5th Transitions symposium, promoting new research and multi-disciplinary academic study of comics/ comix/ manga/ bande dessinée and other forms of sequential art.

By deliberately not appointing a set theme, we hope to put together a programme reflecting the diversity of comics studies. We welcome abstracts for twenty minute papers as well as proposals for panels.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

text-oriented approaches – studies of key creators – historical and contemporary studies of production and circulation of comics – readerships and fan cultures – critical reception – formats, platforms and contexts – the (im)materiality of comics – archival concerns – formalist/narratological approaches – comics and aesthetics – adaptation, convergence and remediation – international iterations and transnational comics – children’s comics – political comics – comics and cultural theory – ideological/discursive critiques – web comics – graphic medicine – non-fiction comics – comics as historiography – comics practice and theory– cultural histories/geographies…

Abstracts for twenty minute papers should be no more than 250 – 300 words. Proposals for papers and panels should be sent as Word documents, with a short biography appended, and submitted by the 30th of July 2014 to Hallvard, Tony and Nina at transitions.symposium@gmail.com.

Transitions is supported by Comica, The Centre for Contemporary Literature (Birkbeck), and the Contemporary Fiction Seminar.

See below for the conference programme.