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Comics Forum 2025: Call for Contributions

03 Jul

13-14 November 2025, Leeds Art Gallery and Central Library (UK)

When David Kunzle asserted in his 1973 magnum opus The Early Comic Strip, that it was by definition ‘a mass medium,’ he pointed to comics’ industrial and mechanical foundations, arguing that: ‘The comic strip is, and can only be, the product of the printing press’ (3). Although experimental comics challenge the idea that mechanical reproduction is a defining characteristic of comics, and the notion of the comic book industry as a coherent entity has been questioned, it is undeniable that comics have been greatly influenced by the industrial contexts in which they are created and circulate. These contexts include the companies that are well known for creating comics, such as publishers and retailers, but also less publicly visible but vitally important industries: printers, distributers, marketers, translators and more. Technology platforms and other media industries that connect to comics through branding, cross-promotion and trans- or multimedia forms also play important roles.

Comics Forum 2025 will explore the theme of industry, broadly conceived, in relation to any form of comics (i.e. including bande dessinée, manga etc.). Proposals are welcome from academics, and from industry participants (in any role). Topics may include:

  • Historical and/or geographical comics industries
  • The economics of comics and related industries
  • Models for studying comics as industrial forms
  • Anti- or non-industrial comics production
  • Digitisation as an industrial shift 
  • Representations of industries in comics narratives
  • Agency, authorship and alienation within industrial contexts
  • Industrial relations, labour movements, precarity, collectivisation 
  • Disruption in comics’ industrial contexts
  • The ethics of comics’ industrial practices
  • Comics as part of a broader media ecosystem
  • Future(s) for comics as industrially produced mass media
  • Challenges facing comics industries in the 2020s and 30s

We recognise that artificial intelligence (AI) is a key point of concern across a range of fields, and proposals on this topic are welcome, but we encourage applicants to think broadly about technology and manufacturing.

Submissions will be considered in any of the following three formats:

  • Paper: 20-minute paper on a focused topic
  • Panel: 1-hour structured discussion between three or more participants
  • Workshop: 1-hour interactive, collaborative session

Proposals of up to 250 words in length are now being accepted at this link: SUBMIT NOW. The deadline for submissions is the 31st of August and you will be notified of acceptance by or before the 12th of September. Please include a short (100 word) biography of your speaker(s) with your proposal. We look forward to welcoming you to Leeds!

 
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Posted by on 2025/07/03 in Comics Forum 2025, News

 

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Between Bodies: Embodiment and Comics

09 Jul

Comics Forum 2024 | 14-15 November | Leeds Central Library (UK)

The thirteenth Comics Forum will focus on themes of embodiment within comics and Comics Studies across cultures, disciplines, and forms. 

Embodiment is the process through which both individual and cultural ideas and beliefs become material. Embodiment generates an emerging challenge to and within Comics Studies that scholars such as Eszter Szép and Scott Jeffery have begun to explore within the field. Through themes of embodiment, we hope to call attention to how comics are a deeply embodied medium. Comics become embodied when they are made, through the movement of the body to draw, write, and make comics; when they are read through the readers’ bodily responses; when they become bodies of work or story. Comics themselves embody ideas and narratives through their lines, colours, layouts, speech balloons, visual and narrative styles, publishing formats, and sizes. 

As an embodied medium, comics can re-affirm or unsettle the boundaries of dichotomies, such as the embodied Self/Other; the individual/collective; the objective/subjective; the fictional/real; the powerful/powerless. We are particularly interested in work that moves away from or challenges Western hegemonic forms and practices of embodiment in comics and graphic narratives.

Comics Studies attempts to situate itself between these cultures, bodies of work, creators, and readers. We are therefore also interested in how Comics Studies is embodied in the academy. What might Comics Studies, as an embodied methodology, bring to other disciplines or fields? Comics Forum 2024 therefore invites participants to consider embodiment through or within any new, developing, or previous work in the field. Subjects for discussion may include, but are not limited to: 

  • Comics as archival bodies 
  • Embodiment in comics industries 
  • Embodiment of Comics Studies in the academy 
  • Embodiment in Comics Studies’ research methodologies
  • Possibilities of disembodiment in comics
  • Embodiment in/of/through comics forms 
  • Embodiment and biopolitics in comics
  • Embodied identities and positions in comics 
  • Negotiations of embodied boundaries in comics 
  • Interaction between comics and bodies of comics creators/readers/scholars

Comics Forum welcomes speakers from a diverse range of backgrounds, ranging from students to senior academics, practitioners and beyond. No particular academic disciplines are preferred, and we are open to proposals on comics and related forms from any part of the world. Proposals of up to 250 words for papers of 20 minutes in length are now being accepted at: comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk. Alternative formats of presentation, such as workshops or roundtable discussions, are welcome but must fit within the same 20-minute time limit. If you are proposing an alternative format, please indicate this in your proposal. 

The deadline for submissions is the 31st of August, and you will be notified of acceptance by or before the 13th of September 2024. Please include a short (100 word) biography with your proposal. We look forward to seeing you in Leeds!

 
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Posted by on 2024/07/09 in News, Thought Bubble, Uncategorized

 

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Comics Forum 2023: Registration Open

17 Oct

Registration is now open for Comics Forum 2023: Reboots & Remediations, taking place at Leeds Central Library on the 9th and 10th of November 2023.

We look forward to welcoming delegates to Leeds for what promises to be a fascinating conference covering a diverse range of topics.

You can find the programme here, and register for the event here.

Tickets are priced at £23 for one day or £45 for two days, and include lunch and refreshments.

 
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Posted by on 2023/10/17 in Comics Forum 2023, News, Uncategorized

 

Call for Papers: Comics Forum 2023

30 Jun

Leeds Central Library
Leeds, UK
9th & 10th of November 2023

Following a hiatus, Comics Forum will return to its regular slot as the academic strand of the Thought Bubble sequential art festival in November 2023!

For our twelfth event, we will focus on the themes of reboots and remediations in comics and related forms across cultures.

Comics have a long history of reinventing themselves and adapting to changing circumstances and media forms. Examples are varied, ranging from the resurgence of the superhero genre in the U.S. following the establishment of the Comics Code in 1954 to the repositioning of comics as “graphic novels” in the late 1980s and 1990s, and the increasingly numerous adaptations of comics into other media forms such as film, television and video games. Comics also has a long history of drawing on related art forms including literature, visual arts and performance, adapting their techniques and properties to tell new stories, and new types of stories, in comics. Comics Forum 2023 will focus on the flexibility, adaptability and intermediality of comics. Subjects for discussion might include, but are not limited to:

  • Adaptations to and from comics
  • Attempts to revitalise comics properties
  • Comics in new contexts (e.g., in translation)
  • Fan cultures as reworking, reinventing, queering comics, and remaking comics texts
  • Moments of reinvention in the cultural, economic, political or social histories of comics
  • Rebirths, returns and resurrections of characters or groups in comics
  • Representations of comics in other media
  • Republications of comics in new formats
  • Retconning and revisionist histories
  • Revisions of comics in new editions

Comics Forum welcomes speakers from a diverse range of backgrounds, ranging from students to senior academics, practitioners and beyond. No particular academic disciplines are preferred, and we are open to proposals on comics and related forms from any part of the world. Proposals of up to 250 words for papers of 20 minutes in length are now being accepted at: comicsforum@hotmail.co.uk.

Alternative formats of presentation are welcome but must fit within the same 20-minute time limit. If you are proposing an alternative format please indicate this in your proposal.

The deadline for submissions is the 16th of August 2023 and you will be notified of acceptance by or before 30th of August 2023. Please include a short (100 word) biography with your proposal. We look forward to seeing you in Leeds!

 
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Posted by on 2023/06/30 in Comics Forum 2023, News, Thought Bubble

 

Comics Forum 2020 Cancelled

14 Sep

Unfortunately, we have decided not to run a Comics Forum conference this year. The cancellation of Comics Forum, an event series that has run for ten instalments without interruption is not something we take lightly. In brief, the reasons we have made this decision are as follows:

  • The original theme proposal and CFP text were produced early in 2020, before a wide range of globally significant events took place. We are not confident that the focus of the event as written is adequate to respond to these events in a meaningful way. The questions were being asked in a very different context to that in which answers would have been given.
  • Recent events in the field of comics-scholarship specifically have compounded this problem and made clear that any attempt to respond to deep-rooted structural problems in the field would need to proceed from a broader base than was incorporated into the CFP as written.
  • Given that some of these recent events have highlighted the ways in which (in particular) more junior academics might be penalised for speaking out about structural inequalities, we have a responsibility to ensure that the spaces we create for discussion do not perpetuate such harms. Our plans for digital presentations do not do enough to ensure this type of safeguarding is possible, and we are not prepared to rush through an alternative approach.
  • Similarly, although the move to a digital context presents many opportunities, it also creates more general areas of risk around safeguarding and moderation. Given the theme of the conference and the possibility of harm coming from these areas, we are not confident that we could adequately protect participants from or prepare participants for adverse consequences arising from the event (we are including the organising team as participants here). To be clear: this is not an indication that we regard any of the proposals we received as particularly problematic, but we are aware that interpretations vary widely in online interactions and this presents some risk.

Comics Forum has always sought to offer an open and productive space to start and continue conversations on important topics, but its greatest impact has been outside the event itself in the relationships that persist. We have no doubt that these relationships will continue to prosper without an event this year.

Over the next year, we will be keeping a close eye on events both within Comics Studies and beyond and considering how we can best engage with the important work of developing the field in future.

The Comics Forum 2020 Organising Committee
Harriet Kennedy, Ian Hague, Maggie Gray, Olivia Hicks

 
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Posted by on 2020/09/14 in Comics Forum 2020, News

 
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