The Fan Studies Network

Transitions is a one-day symposium promoting new research and multi-disciplinary academic study of comics/ comix/ manga/ bande dessinée and other forms of sequential art, now in its fourth year.

Saturday the 26^th of October 2013

School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London, London WC1E 7HX

Keynote: Dr. Ann Miller (University of Leicester, joint editor of European Comic Art)

Respondent: Dr. Roger Sabin (Central St. Martins, University of the Arts London)

Transitions is currently the only regular academic comics event based in London, and is part of Comica – The London International Comics Festival.  The symposium offers a platform where different perspectives and methodologies can be brought together and shared.  As an event devoted to promoting new research into comics in all their forms the symposium provides a forum for research from postgraduate students and early career lecturers.

Comics studies occupy a unique multi-disciplinary middle-space, one that encourages cross-disciplinary pollination and a convergence of distinct knowledges: literary and cultural studies, visual arts and media, modern languages, sociology, geography and more. By thinking about comics across different disciplines, we hope to stimulate and provoke debate and to address a wide spectrum of questions, to map new trends and provide a space for dialogue and further collaboration to emerge.

We welcome abstracts for twenty minute papers of 250 – 300 words.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

 International iterations: manga, bande dessinée , fumetti etc. – children’s comics – superheroes – non-fiction comics – the (im)materiality of comics – formalist approaches – cultural histories –adaptation/ remediation – autographics – early comics – comic strips – small press –alternative comics/ underground commix – comics narratologies – political comics – comics and cultural theory – contexts of production and circulation – audiences – comics and the archive – subjectivity in comics – graphic medicine – fan subcultures – comics as historiography – key creators…

Proposals for papers should be sent as Word documents, with a short biography appended. Abstracts should be submitted by the 30th of July 2013 to Hallvard, Tony and Nina at transitions.symposium@gmail.com.

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