CFP Reminder: Fractured Images / Broken Words (conference: February 15; June 12)

Note: The organizers of the following conference are still looking for participants!

Fractured Images / Broken Words
A Multi-Disciplinary PostGraduate Symposium
Department of English and Creative Writing
Lancaster University, UK
June 12, 2010

Keynote Speakers:
Professor Terry Eagleton, Lancaster University
and
Andy Diggle, comic-book writer and former editor of 2000 AD

Featuring art installations by Christine Dawson

Click here for our original post about this conference.

CFP: Fractured Images / Broken Words (conference: February 15; June 12)

Note the explicit suggestion of papers about graphic novels. Click here for the conference website. Thanks to the Institute for Comics Studies for the tip.

Fractured Images / Broken Words
A Multi-Disciplinary PostGraduate Symposium
Department of English and Creative Writing
Lancaster University, UK
June 12, 2010

Keynote Speakers:
Professor Terry Eagleton, Lancaster University
and
Andy Diggle, comic-book writer and former editor of 2000 AD

Featuring art installations by Christine Dawson

Visual and multi-modal texts are an integral element of both popular and literary culture, contemporary and past. This conference invites papers which engage with the notion of text and image, through, for example critical examination of graphic novels, television, film, illustrated texts or adaptations. We actively welcome papers with an interdisciplinary approach, allowing for a collision of meaning and interpretations of both text and image. We’re particularly interested in – but not limiting our remit to – topics which focus on the fusion of word and image, and perhaps on the gaps which can be perceived between, and within, visual and textual representation. Where do textual spaces exist? Where do word and image meet? Where do they separate? Where does meaning fuse? Where does it disintegrate? As the conference title suggests, we’re also interested in the duplicitous and unstable nature of texts and images and would also like to explore issues such as: How words and / or images be misappropriated, misused or misdirected to create alternative and divergent meanings; The fragility of meaning created by words and / or images; Problems of reading and interpretation.

This conference will provide a stimulating environment for postgraduate students and other researchers to present work and to share and discuss ideas stemming from the examination of texts employing varied representational modes, adaptations and interactions between text and image. We hope to encourage speakers from multiple disciplines, working across historical, cultural and literary periods, and with a wide range of texts.

Suggested topics, themes and disciplinary approaches include:

• Film Studies
• Cultural Studies
• Literary Studies
• Language
• Propaganda Texts
• Journalism / Photo Journalism
• Graphic Novels and Picture Books
• Children and Young Adult Literature
• Television
• Identity
• Ownership of Truth
• Authenticity
• Biographical Texts
• Gender
• Ethnicity
• Sexuality
• Translation
• Gaps and Silences
• Absences

Or, any other topic which the conference title inspires.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words for papers not exceeding 20 minutes should be submitted by 15th February 2010, to the organisers at: conference@lancasterluminary.com. Please include the title of your paper, your name, e-mail address, institutional affiliation, and a brief summary of your research interests.

For more information, visit the conference website.

Conference - Destined for Men: Visual Materials for Male Audiences, 1750 - 1880 (Worcester, MA; Oct. 16-17)

With presentations on caricatures and other illustrations, this conference might be of interest to comics scholars.

Destined for Men:
Visual Materials for Male Audiences,
1750 - 1880

October 16-17, 2009
American Antiquarian Society
Worcester, Massachusetts

Through the emergence of women's studies programs in academic institutions in the past generation or two, many aspects of women's lives have been documented through publications and academic courses. The third conference of the Center for Historic American Visual Culture focuses not on women but on men. Looking at examples of visual materials of and for men is a way to look at a different gendered audience. In the literature on American graphic materials, little has been written about the audience for historical images. The papers presented at this conference begin to address this need.

The presentations by scholars from a variety of disciplines address images of the male body, public portraiture, prints and illustrations for male audiences, boxing, erotica, using drawings as examples of friendship among men, and men and fashion advertisements. Speakers include curators, librarians, historians, art historians, and literary scholars.

Joshua Brown, executive director of the American Social History Project, located in the Graduate Center of The City University of New York, will present "Catching His Eye: The Sporting Male Pictorial Press in the Gilded Age," the Twenty-Seventh James Russell Wiggins Lecture in the Program in the History of the Book in American Culture at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, October 16.

Between the final session and the Wiggins Lecture, there will be time to view selected materials from the graphic arts collection in the Council Room in Antiquarian Hall

For the schedule of presentations, see the conference website, which is also the source for the illustration above.

UPDATE - CFP: "Visual Literatures," Special Issue of College Literature (now April 2010)

As we posted earlier this month, College Literature is looking for some more contributors for their forthcoming "visual literatures" issue. Please note that the new deadline for submissions is April 2010. For more information, see our origianl post.

Image Credit: College Literature website.

CFP: "Visual Literatures," Special Issue of College Literature (November 2009)

(CORRECTION: In the initial version of this post I confused the journal College Literature with College English. My apologies to both journals, and also to Dale Jacobs who most cordially pointed out my error.)

The journal College Literature is looking for some more contributors for their forthcoming "visual literatures" issue. A few days ago, Dr. James Bucky Carter (editor of Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels) sent a brief note to the Comics Scholars discussion list about the matter. I wrote to the journal for some additional information, and here 'tis.

This is the information I have been sending to those interested in submitting an essay for the special issue.

Essays should deal with approaches to reading, teaching, and/or appreciating visual literatures, which can include graphic novels, film, photography, or any other medium in which the visual is dominant. The expected length is 20 to 30 pages, double spaced, with works cited list and notes.

Originally the issue was to be published late 2010 but I think that may be pushed to early 2011. The current deadline is Nov. 2009, but again, I think the time may be extended. The deadline for submission has been extended to April 2010 with an anticipated publication date of July 2010. The essay must be original and not one previously published. The editor is currently out of the country and I will talk to him about the issue when he returns the end of August.

FYI, here's College Literature's statement of editorial policy:

College Literature is a quarterly journal of scholarly criticism dedicated to serving the needs of college/university teachers by providing them with access to innovative ways of studying and teaching new bodies of literature and experiencing old literatures in new ways.

The journal provides usable, readable, and timely material designed to keep its readers abreast of new developments and shifts in the theory and practice of literature by covering the full range of what is presently being read and taught as well as what should be read and taught in the college literature classroom.

It encourages a variety of approaches to textual analysis and criticism (including political, feminist, and poststructuralist) on English, American, and European literature in addition to Eastern literatures, minority and Third World literatures, oral literature, and interdisciplinary/comparative studies (such as anthropology and literature, computers and literature, literature and film, and so on).

If you're interested in contributing to this special issue (or to CL in general), please contact:

Elizabeth Alex Lukens
Editorial Assistant
College Literature
210 E. Rosedale Ave.
West Chester University
West Chester, PA 19383
elukens [at] wcupa.edu

And tell her Comics Research & Such sent you!

Image Credit: College Literature website.