Spaced Out. Spatiality in Comics
deadline for submissions:
May 31, 2017
full name / name of organization:
Comics Studies Research Clutster. Department of Humanities, University of Cagliari (Italy)
contact email:
spazi.nuvole@unica.it
Spaced Out. Spatiality in Comics
International Conference
Cagliari, Italy, 26-27 October 2017
How is space thematised and transformed, strengthened or weakened in the narrative comic? To what extent do comics rewrite and reinvent space by offering a place where spatial coordinates can be reconfigured in a utopian or fantastic manner? How does this reconfiguration affect perception devices? And again, how can the representation of spatiality in comics be modified within the network of the ongoing transmedia transformations?
Comics writers have long shown a preference for setting their works in the city and have implicitly tailored their works for readers, whose lifestyle and way of consuming comics as ‘products’ of the cultural industry single them out as a completely urbanised audience. Alongside this representation, interest has also been growing in internal or domestic space, from houses to artists’ studios, from apartment buildings to nursing homes, from hospitals to prisons. Such spaces are anything but neutral settings and, just like urban spaces, play a decisive role in shaping the narrative and the characters that move therein. Last but not least, space must be considered as asemiotic phenomenon: the language of comics manages to produce its own spatiality on the flat surface of the page, a spatiality that defines the coordinates of perception and the representation of space.
The Spaced Out. Spatiality in Comics Conference calls on scholars to tackle the issue of space in the narration of comics, against the background of the broader contemporary narrative and transmedia landscape, adopting various theoretical and critical approaches. There are two ways to participate:
– submitting a proposal for a paper to be presented at the general sessions coordinated by the respondent appointed by the Scientific Committee;
– submitting a workshop proposal for the two roundtable sessions that will focus on how the City and House are represented in the following works:
The city
Andrea Pazienza, Le straordinarie avventure di Pentothal (1982); Art Spiegelman, In the Shadow of No Towers (2004)
The house
Richard McGuire, Here (2014); Paco Roca, La casa (2015)
Paper proposals should be around 500 words long. A short bio-bibliography of the author and an essential annotated bibliography must also be submitted. Two papers can be presented if one of these concerns the workshop sessions. Proposals must be submitted by May 31, 2017 to spazi.nuvole@unica.it. Authors will be notified of paper acceptance by June 30, 2017. Papers presented at the conference will be peer-reviewed and considered for publication. The deadline for sending the final version of the articles is December 30, 2017.
Participants:
Michael A. Chaney is Associate Professor of English at Dartmouth College, Chair of African and African American Studies. He specialises in nineteenth-century American literature and African American literature, visual culture studies and mixed race representation, comics and graphic novels. He has published Reading Lessons in Seeing: Mirrors, Masks, and Mazes in the Autobiographical Graphic Novel (University Press of Mississippi, 2017) and edited Graphic Subjects: Critical Essays on Autobiography and Graphic Novels (The University of Wisconsin Press, 2011).
Sara Colaone is a comics writer, illustrator and animator of short films. She teaches Illustration at Bologna’s Academy of Fine Arts. Her work has been published by Kappa, Dargaud, Coconino, Norma, Schreiber&Leser, Centrala, Stripburger, Giunti, Zanichelli, Pearson and in several journals: Internazionale, Le Monde Diplomatique DE, Rivista Il Mulino, Ventiquattro Magazine. Her latest graphic novel is Leda.Che solo amore e luce ha per confine (Coconino, 2016).
Manuele Fior is a comics writer and illustrator. His work has been published by Coconino, Atrabile, Futuropolis, Delcourt and in several newspapers and magazines: The New Yorker, Le Monde, Vanity Fair, La Repubblica, Sole 24 Ore, Internazionale, Il Manifesto, RollingStone Magazine. His latest book is entitled I giorni della merla (Coconino, 2016); his latest graphic novels are L’Intervista (Coconino, 2013) and Cinquemila Chilometri al Secondo (Coconino, 2010), which won the Fauve d’Or (Golden Wildcat) at the 2011 Angoulême Festival.