by Nicoletta Mandolini, Alessia Mangiavillano, Giorgio Busi Rizzi and Eva Van de Wiele
From Monday 12 July to Thursday 15 July, the third edition of the AIPI (Associazione Internazionale Professori di Italiano) Summer School took place in Ghent. For the first time, the Summer School was dedicated to the study of comics. The edition was sponsored by AIPI; the Italian Cultural Institute of Brussels; the Dante Alighieri Society of Ghent; and the research groups COMICS and SnIF.
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Tags: A Contract with God, adaptation, Alberto Giolotti, Alexander Calder, authorship, autofiction, Belgium, City of Glass, collages, comics, David Mazzucchelli, discontinuity, Enki Bilal, film, Finnegans Wake, fumetti, Gene Roddenberry, Gianni Colombo, graphic journalism, Graphic Novels, Henry Jenkins, imagination, Italy, James Joyce, Kafka, Kobane Calling, La Guerre des tranchées, Le Château, Le Voyage, Lev Manovich, literature, Lovecraft, Marvel, mass media, merchandising, metafiction, Mickey Mouse, Mobile sur deux plans, Olivier Deprez, Paul Auster, Paul Karasik, Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, political engagement, radio, Reinhard Kleist, representation of realities, Robert Crumb, Roland Barthes, SnIF, social commentary, stagnation, Star Trek, Strutturazione fluida, subjectivity, Summer Schools, television, Tezuka Osamu, transmediality, transtextual narratives, Trilogie Nikopol, Umberto Eco, Will Eisner, Zerocalcare
DAY 1/2
by Eva Van de Wiele and Dona Pursall
The digital symposium Sugar and Spice, and the Not So Nice: Comics Picturing Girlhood was launched on 22 April 2021 with a profound and personal keynote by Mel Gibson. Using herself as a case study she reflected on being a reader, a librarian, a scholar and an individual who, in a variety of fields, has represented non-standard notions of ‘girl’. In workshops for librarians, teachers and scholars, Gibson uses comics for object elicitation, allowing her to encourage others to reconsider themselves as child comics readers and the complex ideologies knotted up in this experience. Gibson’s work provokes the notion of the individual as a role model, a unique and precise representation with particular qualities, interests and passions. Using restorative nostalgia entails not just reflecting back on but, also, resisting shame and embarrassment, forgiving and accepting ourselves as the child readers we were. Gibson shows a respect for the powerful and evocative materiality of comics and offers a compassionate model for identity. Whilst speaking personally about comics reading, Gibson engaged with discourses of hierarchy, child development and affect, interrogating the simple truth that what we read is part of making us who we are.
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Tags: access, adventure, aesthetics, affect, agency, autoethnography, biography, body, censorship, Child characters, child development, children readers, comics, COMICS project, coming of age, curiosity, dance, disability, disobedience, economics, Emmanuel Guibert, empathy, Escape from Syria, ethics, Europe, exploration, family, feminism, Gender, gender roles, genre, girl protagonists, girlhood, Giulia Pex, gutters, hierarchy, Hilda and the Black Hound, identity, independent women, insecurity, isolation, Italy, Jeg rømmer, Joann Sfar, Khalat, Lars Horneman, liberated women, Luke Pearson, Lumberjanes, Mari Kanstad Johnsen, Marvel, materiality of comics, Mirabelle, mobility, Mophead, Morten Dürr, neurodiversity, news narratives, nostalgia, objectification, operationalised invisibility, oppression, otherness, Pacifica youth, parenthood, queering, reader response, refugee experiences, representation, resistance, Samya Kullab, Sardine, second wave feminism, Selina Tusitala Marsh, shame and embarrassment, silence, social commentary, societal rules, song, status and authority, subjugation, Syria, Sıdıka, teenage culture, The Unstoppable Wasp, trauma, Turkey, twentieth century, Valentina Mela Verde, values, vulnerability, women’s magazines, working young women, Zenobia
By Whitney Hunt
New Racism Ideology In the USA
Whiteness is an enduring construct of privilege and power that systematically shapes and maintains racial inequality, resulting in a hierarchal system of oppression toward people of color (Feagin & Elias 2013). Systematic racism requires generations of people reproducing racist institutions and the white racial framings that support them (Feagin 2013). According to Feagin (2013), the white racial frame is a broad concept encompassing racist practices, imagery and discourse throughout US society shaped by and for the primary benefit of individuals considered white by society. In all eras of American history, manifestations of racism contain the ideological underpinning that justifies racial inequality. Moreover, the societal grip of white racial framing underscores the gross reality that America’s racist foundations are regularly unacknowledged (Feagin 2014; Bonilla-Silva 2017).
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Tags: adaptation, Black Panther, blackness, Captain Marvel, Colorblindness, DC, fandom, film, Jim Crow laws, Marvel, New racism, origin story, Race/ethnicity, racism, superheroes, USA, White racial frame, whiteness, Women
Comics Forum 
AIPI Summer School 2021 Ricerca a fumetti (Researching comics: genres, form(s), variations) 1/2
by Nicoletta Mandolini, Alessia Mangiavillano, Giorgio Busi Rizzi and Eva Van de Wiele
From Monday 12 July to Thursday 15 July, the third edition of the AIPI (Associazione Internazionale Professori di Italiano) Summer School took place in Ghent. For the first time, the Summer School was dedicated to the study of comics. The edition was sponsored by AIPI; the Italian Cultural Institute of Brussels; the Dante Alighieri Society of Ghent; and the research groups COMICS and SnIF.
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Posted by Annick Pellegrin on 2021/09/15 in Conference reports
Tags: A Contract with God, adaptation, Alberto Giolotti, Alexander Calder, authorship, autofiction, Belgium, City of Glass, collages, comics, David Mazzucchelli, discontinuity, Enki Bilal, film, Finnegans Wake, fumetti, Gene Roddenberry, Gianni Colombo, graphic journalism, Graphic Novels, Henry Jenkins, imagination, Italy, James Joyce, Kafka, Kobane Calling, La Guerre des tranchées, Le Château, Le Voyage, Lev Manovich, literature, Lovecraft, Marvel, mass media, merchandising, metafiction, Mickey Mouse, Mobile sur deux plans, Olivier Deprez, Paul Auster, Paul Karasik, Pierre Fresnault-Deruelle, political engagement, radio, Reinhard Kleist, representation of realities, Robert Crumb, Roland Barthes, SnIF, social commentary, stagnation, Star Trek, Strutturazione fluida, subjectivity, Summer Schools, television, Tezuka Osamu, transmediality, transtextual narratives, Trilogie Nikopol, Umberto Eco, Will Eisner, Zerocalcare