New Narrative Conference, Toronto, May 6-7, 2010

Just before the Toronto Comic Arts Festival (May 8-9, 2010), an academic comics conference is being held at the University of Toronto. Both TCAF and the New Narrative conference are great events if you're serious about comics.

Here is the call for papers:

3rd annual New Narrative conference:
Narrative arts and visual media
An interdisciplinary conference at the University of Toronto
6 – 7 May 2010

In keeping with the spirit of sequels, we are again soliciting papers on a wide range of graphic novels, comic art, and related visual media. Comics, whether in the form of novelistic illustrations, newspaper serials, animated films, film adaptations, graphic novels, or sequential art narratives, have been with us since the rise of literature itself, yet until recently such media have never been considered “serious”—or at least, serious enough to be considered novels that might be on university syllabi. But are illustrated novels and live action films really about the pictures and not the narrative? How can the history of the form be reconciled with consumer culture and the ill-defined categories of “high” and “low” culture?

Papers which examine and interpret these narratives in interdisciplinary forms are most welcome. Essays on novelistic illustrations, newspaper serials, animated films, film adaptations, graphic novels, or sequential art narratives may consider the following (incomplete) list:

graphic novels and auto/biography illustrated and multi-media works
web design and on-line comix film adaptations of comics
series; engravings and caricatures the Comics Code Authority
the “invention” of manga geopolitics/war and the graphic novel
bande desinée & European comix early comics & comic history
illustrations in (literary) novels woodcut and “silent” artists

Proposals should be 400-500 words and must clearly indicate significance, the line of argument, principal texts considered, and relation to existing scholarship (or originality). One email copy of the proposal, and a 50 word bio note must be included, as an attachment in MS Word.

Deadline for proposals is 31 March 2010 (responses by 08 April 2010)

Jeff Parker, Assistant Professor, and/or Dr Andrew Lesk
Department of English, University of Toronto
E-mail: andrew.lesk@utoronto.ca

See also http://andrewlesk.com/conferences.html

This Conference will take place just before the Toronto Comics Arts Festival on May 8 and 9. (See Torontocomics.com)