This two-day interdisciplinary conference will explore the mobility of comics and graphic novels along three axes: time, space, and media. It is sponsored by the Institution of Modern Languages Research (IMLR), University Council of Modern Languages (UCML) and Cardiff University’s School of Modern Languages.
Mobility is understood to include all processes of transformation undergone by comics in their journey across history (time), cultural and linguistic boundaries (space), and different forms of artistic expression (media). These three axes of comics’ mobility are often inter-connected but have so far mostly been explored in isolation and from the perspective of a single discipline or language.
The opportunities and challenges of comics’ translation into different languages, and their adaptation especially from/into narrative prose and film, have received increasing attention in recent years. Comics’ travel through time has not been explored with the same frequency and analytical depth. Here, aspects such as the different textual and paratextual environments in anthologies and re-editions, changes to the artwork, and practices of re-drawing deserve closer attention.
Keynote speakers
Professor Jan Baetens (KU Leuven)
Professor Federico Zanettin (Università degli Studi di Perugia)
Full delegate fee: £50 Reduced delegate fee (i.e. postgraduate research students, unemployed): £25
Thursday, 23 January 2020: Transformation
9:30–10:00 Conference registration (Foyer)
10:00–10:15 Opening / Welcome address. Prof Kate Griffiths, Head of the Cardiff School of Modern Languages
10:15–11:15 Keynote presentation: Reading Comics in Time (Prof Jan Baetens, KU Leuven)
11:15–11:45 Two Distant Soils: Colleen Doran’s Editorial Journey across Time (Isabelle Licari-Guillaume, Université Côte d’Azur, Nice)
11:45–12:15 Mobile Masculinities: Changing Representation of the Gay Male Form in Comics over Time (Garry McLaughlin, University of Dundee)
12:15–13:15 Buffet lunch (Foyer)
13:15–13:45 Comics in the Classroom: Historical Validity in the Comics Form (Chad Harada, San Francisco)
13:45–14:15 ‘Someone Will Remember Us’: The Forgotten Female Cartoonists of Spain’s Transition to Democracy (Rhiannon McGlade, University of Cambridge)
14:15–14:45 Of Fathers and National Narratives: A Borrowed Life’s Journey across Time and Media (Adina Zemanek, University of Central Lancashire)
14:45–15:15 Refreshment break
15:15–15:45 Political Nocturne in Pinturas de guerra by Ángel de la Calle (Agustín Corti, Universität Salzburg)
15:45–16:15 The Expansion of a Symbolic Universe: An Analysis of Operación Bolívar through Time and Symbols (Carolina González Alvarado, Tecnológico de Monterrey)
16:15–16:45 Transmediality and Graphic Narratives: The Case of the Graphic Memoir (Natalie Dupré & Inge Lanslots, KU Leuven)
16:45–17:30 Wine reception (Foyer)
19:00–21:00 Conference dinner (The Twenty Nine Park Place)
Friday, 24 January 2020: Translation & Adaptation
9:30–10:30 Keynote presentation: Global Comics Heroes: Diachronic and Intersemiotic Aspects of Interlingual Translation (Prof Federico Zanettin, Università degli Studi di Perugia)
10:30–11:00 Aristophanic Comic Books for Children (and not Only): Cultural Transfer and Translation (Dimitris Asimakoulas, University of Surrey)
11:00–11:30 From Magazine to Hardcover: Autonomy and Mobility in Zerocalcare’s Kobane Calling (Andrea De Falco, University of Reading)
11:30–12:00 Refreshment break
12:00–12:30 Modesty Blaise Abused in Translation and Adaptation (Pascal Lefèvre, LUCA School of Arts, Campus Sint-Lukas Brussel)
12:30–13:00 Comics as Adaptation: Aka B’s Storia di una madre (Camilla Storskog, Università degli Studi di Milano)
13:00–13:45 Buffet lunch (Foyer)
13:45–14:15 Transmediality against Transphobia: The Politics of Transsexual Self-Portrait in Fumettibrutti’s Work between Comics and Photography (Nicoletta Mandolini, KU Leuven)
14:15–14:45 From Panel to Stage and Screen: Transmedial Mobility of Female Autographic Subjectivities (Elisabeth Krieber, Universität Salzburg)
14:45–15:15 Transmedial Storyworlds and the Representation of the Non-Experience of Italian Terrorism in Luigi Ricca’s Graphic Adaptation of Il tempo materiale (Rachelle Gloudemans, KU Leuven)
15:15–15:45 Refreshment break
15:45–16:15 A Comic Exploration: Gendered Spaces in 19th-Century London (Gina Matteo, San Francisco State University)
16:15–16:45 Je est un autre: Are Digital Comics Still Comics? (Giorgio Busi Rizzi, Universiteit Gent)
16:45–17:00 Closing remarks
