Transnational Comics Studies Workshop

Thursday, January 19, 2017 5:00-7:00 PM Michigan Theater Leading graphic historical novelist Joe Sacco will chronicle how and why he uses the graphic novel format to catalyze social justice and human rights struggles in the U.S. and around the world. His award-winning novels include Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt (a portrait of some of the most marginalized communities in the United States, co-created with Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges); Footnotes in Gaza (a narrative of oral histories collected from elderly Palestinians who witnessed and survived a mass murder during the 1956 Suez War); and Safe Area Gorazde (an account of the brutal effects of the war in the former Yugoslavia on a besieged town that Sacco visited during and after the war). This presentation is part of a series on social justice-oriented graphic novels organized by the International Institute’s Enterprise-funded Conflict and Peace Initiative. The event is in partnership with the Penny Stamps Distingui...

Please join the Transnational Comics Studies Workshop on Friday, January 13th from 2:30-4pm in the Hatcher Library Gallery (Room 100) for a presentation by Dr. Frederik Byrn Køhlert on Disability and Representation in Autobiographical Comics. Disability and Representation in Autobiographical Comics As studies of disability have long pointed out, to be figured as disabled is in key ways to be seen, and to always be the subject of others’ curiosity. Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, influentially, has argued that in disability’s “economy of visual difference, those bodies deemed inferior become spectacles of otherness while the unmarked are sheltered in the neutral space of normalcy.” In the form of comics, this particular relationship with visual embodiment is placed front and center for the reader to engage with, through drawn imagery on the page. For autobiographical comics, especially, this relationship raises questions about how authors might employ various visual codes i...

Please join the Transnational Comics Studies Workshop for a presentation by   MK Czerwiec  on the  AIDS Crisis in LGBTQ Comics  on  Wednesday, December 7th  from  2:30-4pm in  the Duderstadt  (Advanced Training Lab 2- room 3336D). MK Czerwiec is the Artist in Residence at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, Adjunct Professor at Columbia College Chicago in the Department of Creative Writing and Guest Cartoonist for the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation Blog. She is a nurse and cartoonist, who uses comics to reflect on the complexities of illness and caregiving, as well as a scholar researching caregiving in the gay community in preparation for her forthcoming book. Her current project examines the history of AIDS in comics, and she will present on the experience of AIDS in the gay community as reflected in comics, focusing on work that emerged during the AIDS crisis and after. Beyond her scholarship in the medical humanities, M...

Wednesday, October 26th, 2:30-4pm : "Jews and American Comics, with a Strong Personal note" by Dr. Paul Buhle, Brown University. The presentation will be followed by a discussion. Please email Elizabeth (Biz) Nijdam (enijdam@umich.edu) for reading materials. The event will take place in the  3rd Floor Conference Room of the MLB  (Room 3308). Beverages and light snacks will be provided. ---------------------------- Jews and American Comics, with a Strong Personal note," Paul Buhle's presentation reaches from giants of the funny pages a century ago, Rube Goldberg and Harry Hershfield (not forgetting the Yiddish comic strips of Samuel Zagat and Zuni Maud) to the Jewish-American comic art of today, Art Spiegelman, Peter Kuper, Lauren Weinstein and Joey Perr, and the on line "Bernie Sanders Comics" organized by the speaker. What are the key points of art and narrative, how have they evolved and what is their meaning within the larger world of comic...

Friday, September 23rd, 2:30-4pm : "The 1976 Project: A Year in Comic Book Publishing" by Dr. Dale Jacobs, English, University of Windsor. The presentation will be followed by a discussion. Please email Elizabeth (Biz) Nijdam (enijdam@umich.edu) for reading materials. The event will take place in the 3rd Floor Conference Room of the MLB (Room 3308). Beverages and light snacks will be provided. ---------------------------- The 1976 Project: A Year in Comic Book Publishing In this presentation, I will describe, in general terms, my current large project – an examination of comic book publishing in 1976. Such an examination exists at the confluence of a number of disciplines. First, the focus on a single year draws on methodologies from book history, notably Sydney Shep’s model of model of production, distribution and consumption that focuses on “the complex dynamic intercrossings between people (prosopography), places (placeography) and objects (bibliography).” T...