CFP Technical Storytelling: Comics and Community (3/14/2022; Spec Issue of ImageText)

Call for Paper Proposals: ImageText Special Issue Spring 2023

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/02/09/call-for-paper-proposals-imagetext-special-issue-spring-2023

deadline for submissions:
March 14, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Alexander Slotkin & Laura Gonzales / University of Florida

contact email:
aslotkin@ufl.edu

TECHNICAL STORYTELLING: COMICS AND COMMUNITY

Special Issue of ImageTexT, Spring 2023

Guest Editors: Alexander Slotkin & Laura Gonzales

While the social justice turn in technical communication is relatively new, comics have long served as venues for coalition building. From Jen White-Johnson’s work on visual activism for Black Disabled communities (https://jenwhitejohnson.com), to Alfred Hassler’s Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story, to the ongoing series El Viaje Mas Caro, a series of short comics documenting stories from Latin American migrant farm workers living in Vermont, comics have historically been used as a tool for community organizing. Taking up Natasha N. Jones’ call in “The Technical Communicator as Advocate” to integrate social justice advocacy into technical communication, we think it is important to highlight how comics have or might be used in technical communication to facilitate community and forward social justice movements by challenging, resisting, or calling attention to structural forms of White supremacy that continue to harm people of color.

This special issue of ImageTexT will consider how comics in technical communication have been or can be used to facilitate community and challenge everyday structures of oppression at the local or national level. Although there is no definite consensus on what constitutes a “comic,” we see comics as a broad genre of graphic storytelling that rhetorically structures text and imagery through juxtaposition to depict, demonstrate, and/or convey information, whether it be a joke or technical process (see Bahl et al.; Yu; McCloud). Building on Technical Communication Quarterly’s 2020 special issue on “Comics and Graphic Storytelling in Technical Communication,” we intend for this special issue to highlight how technical (and possibly scientific) communication in comic form might initiate or support localized community engagement and/or social justice movements.

The first issue of ImageTexT to explore comics in relation to technical communication studies, “Technical Storytelling: Comics and Community” works to constellate technical communication, comic studies, and community activism at a time when COVID-19 continues to disproportionally affect Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. It is perhaps no surprise then that we take inspiration for this issue from Josh Neufeld’s “A Tale of Two Pandemics,” a comic adaptation of a research article exploring the racial dynamics of the 1918 Influenza Pandemic to better understand racial disparities during the COVID-19 pandemic. Neufeld creates a text that is accessible and easily circulated while also highlighting Black voices and bringing greater attention to a problem facing Black communities. What other imaginative possibilities or futures are there for community engaged or socially oriented comic scholarship in technical communication?

We invite contributors—especially those from multiply-marginalized communities—to reflect on how technical communicators might use comics in their pedagogy, advocacy, and/or scholarship to support local or national communities and movements. To this end, we welcome a variety of genres and approaches to this topic, including but not limited to: comics, formal essays, ethnographies, case studies, video essays, and experiential reports. Contributors may address a variety of questions and issues, including but not limited to the following:

• How do technical communicators work with community members to design culturally informed comics that address localized concerns? And what does this process look like?
• How can we use comics to invite different cultural communities inside our technical writing classrooms, and why does that matter from a social justice point of view?
• How can we integrate social justice advocacy into our technical communication classrooms through comic writing and design?
• There are a variety of technical communication comics that, historically, have served as tools for coalition building. What might we learn about technical communication or social justice advocacy by studying one or more of these examples?
• How might comics and comic studies more generally help orient technical communicators toward social justice initiatives?
• How can or have communities used comics as a form of resistance?
• What specific affordances do comics as a genre of technical communication offer in support of community advocacy?
• How have technical communication comics served as an outlet or catalyst for community action during the COVID-19 pandemic?
• How do socially oriented comics in technical communication shift our understanding of technical communication and/or comic studies more generally?
• In what ways can comics in technical communication challenge White supremacy and other systematic forms of oppression?
• What might a socially informed comic in technical communication studies look like?
• How can we use comics in technical communication to center or highlight Black and Indigenous voices?

ImageText: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies is a peer-reviewed, open-access journal that advances the academic study of an emerging and diverse canon of image-texts, including—but not limited to—comic books and strips, graphic novels, animations, illustrated fiction, picture books, zines, and other media that blend images and texts in complex ecologies. You can visit previous issues of the journal here: https://imagetextjournal.com/

All submissions should be made through the journal’s Submittable portal, the link to which you can find here: https://imagetext.submittable.com/submit

Publication Schedule

Proposals (500 words) due March 14th, 2022

Authors notified by April 4th, 2022

Full submissions due June 27th, 2022

Submissions sent to reviewers by July 11th, 2022

Authors notified by September 22nd, 2022

Revised submissions due November 22nd, 2022

Submissions sent to reviewers by December 2nd, 2022

Authors notified by February 8th, 2023

References

Bahl, Erin Kathleen, Sergio Figueiredo, and Rich Shivener. “Comics and Graphic Storytelling in Technical Communication.” Technical Communication Quarterly, vol. 29, no. 3, 2020, pp. 219-221.

Bennett, Marek, Julia Grand Doucet, Andy Kolovos, and Teresa Mares (Eds.). The Most Costly Journey: Stories of Migrant Farmworkers in Vermont Drawn by New England Cartoonists. Vermont Folklife Center, 2021.

Krishnan, Lakshmi, S. Michelle Ogunwole, and Lisa A. Cooper. “Historical Insights on Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), the 1918 Influenza Pandemic, and Racial Disparities: Illuminating a Path Forward.” Annals of Internal Medicine, vol. 173, no. 6, 2020, pp. 474-481.

Hassler, Alfred. Martin Luther King and The Montgomery Story. Fellowship of Reconciliation, 1957.

Jones, Natasha N. “The Technical Communicator as Advocate: Integrating a Social Justice Approach in Technical Communication.” Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, vol. 46, no. 5, 2016, pp. 342-361.

McCloud, Scott. Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art. Tundra Publishing, 1993.

Neufeld, Josh. “A Tale of Two Pandemics: Historical Insights on Persistent Racial Disparities.” Journalist’s Resource: Informing the News, https://journalistsresource.org/race-and-gender/pandemics-comic-racial-h....

White-Johnson, Jen. jenwhitejohnson. October 2018. https://jenwhitejohnson.com.

Yu, Han. The Other Kind of Funnies: Comics in Technical Communication. Routledge, 2016.



Last updated February 11, 2022

CFP Toronto Comic Arts Festival Academic Symposium (3/31/2022; Toronto 6/17/2022)

Toronto Comic Arts Festival Academic Symposium

Source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/03/13/toronto-comic-arts-festival-academic-symposium

deadline for submissions:
March 31, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Toronto Comic Arts Festival

contact email:
academics@torontocomics.com

TCAF 2022 Academic Symposium Call for Papers

The Toronto Comic Arts Festival is pleased to invite abstract submissions for our inaugural 1-day in-person academic symposium titled TCAF at Twenty: Histories and Futures of Comics Communities. The symposium will take place in person at the Courtyard Downtown Toronto Marriott on Friday, June 17th, 2022. For twenty years, TCAF has offered a vibrant meeting place for creators, scholars, educators, and readers to come together and celebrate their shared love of comics–a uniquely participatory medium that is adept at communicating both complex realities and transformative fantasies. Comics are communities, and communities are comics; the strength of one is the strength of the other. This symposium will consider the histories and futures of comics as vehicles and representations of community and communication. How and what do comics communicate, and how and where can they communicate better, to make comics communities more inclusive, accessible, and dynamic?

The symposium is open to all subjects and theoretical disciplines considering all aspects of comics, including cultural histories and formal concerns as well as politics of representation (including representations of gender, race, sexuality, etc.). We hope to explore and identify the strides comics and comics studies have made in the past two decades to enlarge their scope and scale as well as the boundaries they have yet to examine, push, or eliminate while providing a new platform to connect TCAF’s existing audience with communities of comics scholars. We welcome papers that engage with all forms of comic art (commercial, literary, alternative, zines, webcomics, etc.) and all comics genres (fiction, non-fiction, adventure, science-fiction, mystery, horror, superhero, children’s, etc.). Presentations should be academic in tone but accessible to non-academics.

The TCAF 2022 Academic Symposium is accepting abstracts for the following types of presentations:

1. Panel Proposal: A submission by 1 member of a panel as to the topic and discussion of that panel, in coordination with the other members of the proposed panel. All panelists listed must be confirmed participants at the time of submission. Maximum of 4 people including the moderator of the panel. Panelists will speak for 10 minutes each or provide a round table discussion on the topic from their respective experiences. Fifteen minutes will be reserved for the audience to engage the panelists in questions at the end.
2. Lightning Talk: A 5-7 minute quick presentation on one refined topic of analysis. We will gather approximately 5-7 individuals together to present their lightning talks leaving fifteen minutes for an audience question and answer period.
3. Single Panelist Proposal: A paper of 15 minutes in length to be included on a panel of similar content arranged by the organizers. Three panelists will present during a session leaving fifteen minutes for an audience question and answer period.
4. Poster Presentation: A casual gallery session to engage in multiple topics in a more exploratory discursive manner with the researcher present.

Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words along with a brief biography (approx. 150 words) for each participating panelist on your proposal by Thursday, March 31, 2022, to academics@torontocomics.com. Please include the following information at the top of your proposal:

Name:

Title/Affiliation (if applicable):

Email Contact:

Type of Presentation proposed (Lightning talk, panel, poster, etc.):

The abstracts and bios of accepted participants will be compiled into a symposium program and published (then later archived) on the TCAF website.

There will be a registration fee of $20 CAD for accepted applicants to help defray the costs of the symposium. To make the symposium as accessible as possible to all presenters, TCAF offers registration sponsorships for individuals wishing to present. If you wish to be sponsored by TCAF to present at the TCAF 2022 Symposium, please add “TCAF Sponsored Presentation” to your proposal with no other information necessary about the sponsorship. TCAF will sponsor your registration.

Offers of acceptance will be returned by the end of April 2022. Individuals will be notified by email. If you have any questions or concerns, please email symposium organizer Dr. Anna Peppard at anna@torontocomics.com

Like the general festival, this symposium will be held in-person and will be accessible to the public. TCAF is committed to following all Covid-19 regulations set out by the local, provincial, and federal governments at the time of the festival. TCAF will also be following site-specific regulations set out by its participating venues – The Toronto Public Library and the Courtyard Marriott – to ensure the safety of all guests and participants. We will actively update all presenters and attendees of any and all evolving safety protocols.



Last updated March 14, 2022

EXPIRED CFP: Collections, Archives, Cultures (Comics Studies Society Conference MSU 7/28-30/2022)

EXPIRED CFP. (My apologies for having missed this earlier.)

Collections, Archives, Cultures

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/02/15/collections-archives-cultures

deadline for submissions:
March 4, 2022

full name / name of organization:
Comics Studies Society

contact email:
comicsstudiesorg@gmail.com

Call for Papers: DEADLINE EXTENDED
COMICS STUDIES SOCIETY CONFERENCE, JULY 28-30, 2022
In collaboration with Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI

COLLECTIONS, ARCHIVES, CULTURES

The fifth annual Comics Studies Society conference returns to an in-person format in 2022 at Michigan State University, home of the massive Murray and Hong Comic Art Collection. To mark this location and collaboration, we propose that the concepts of collections, archives, and their various cultures mark our gathering. What does it mean to form a collection, to curate a comics community, or inhabit collecting or archival cultures? What are the politics of collecting? What gets included, what gets discarded, and who gets to decide, and how? How do comics communities coalesce around collections, and how do they in turn create new ones that challenge those that have taken shape before them? We encourage our members to engage with these questions and concepts as they relate to their own innovative work in comics studies. We are particularly interested in proposals that address these questions of comics collections, archives, and cultures, and we especially welcome international approaches to this theme, though all submitted proposals will receive full consideration for inclusion in the conference program.

In recognition of some members’ preference for virtual participation in this year’s conference, we will accept proposals for virtual papers, panels, and roundtable discussions for a limited number of slots. Please also note that all presenters and attendees will be required to demonstrate proof of full vaccination (two shots and a booster) in order to participate in in-person events.

Guidelines for Submission
We are accepting submissions for the following:
1. Individual papers (20 min., presented in person or virtually)
2. Panels of three papers (presented in person or virtually)
3. Roundtables of short (5 min.) presentations by 4-5 presenters followed by discussion (presented in person or virtually)
4. Pop-ups (as panels, roundtables, talks, tours, etc.) related to archives and collections (presented virtually and later archived on the CSS website)

**Templates are available on our website: www.comicsstudies.org**

All proposals should be sent as Word files by email by March 4, 2022 to: comicsstudiesorg@gmail.com

The conference organizers will send out notifications of acceptance by the middle of March. Confirmation of intent to participate and copies of vaccination cards will be due by the end of March in order for accepted presenters to appear in the program. Please add our conference email to your trusted senders to ensure email delivery. A presenter's name may appear twice in the program. All presenters must be members of the Comics Studies Society at the time of registration. For more information on the Comic Studies Society, please check our website at http://comicsstudies.org/.



Last updated February 16, 2022