[Comicsstudiessociety] MLA2021CFPs (reminder)

[Dong, Lan]

MLA 2021 Special Session CFP: Comics and Graphic Narratives for Young Audiences (Deadline: 03/10/20)
Comics and Graphic Narratives for Young Audiences
This panel explores intersections between children's literature and comics (including manga and graphic novels). All periods and nations welcome.
Call for Papers for a proposed special session at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention on January 7-10, 2021 in Toronto, ON. This collaborative panel is jointly sponsored by the Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum and the Children's and Young Adult Literature Forum.
Children's comics and graphic novels have emerged as the dominant commercial force in the industry, with authors like Raina Telgemeier and Dav Pilkey selling millions of books. Yet comics studies still pays relatively little attention to comics for children. As Jared Gardner writes in PMLA, "comics studies as a whole remains largely oblivious to the world of comics for children and young adults, by far the fastest-growing demographic in the field" (597). While there has been some recent scholarship on children's comics, including an edited collection by Michelle Ann Abate & Gwen Athene Tarbox (2017) and monographs by both Lara Saguisag (2019) and Qiana Whitted (2019), the children's segment of the comics market remains insufficiently theorized - thanks to the field's historical focus on comics for adults. This panel seeks to fill this gap by calling attention to both contemporary and historical connections between comics, children, and childhood.
Some questions panelists might address include (but are not limited to):
·       Do comics scholars pay enough attention to children's comics? Why are children's graphic novels not viewed as being the same medium as adult comics?
·       Having conferred legitimacy on a once-maligned genre ("comics") via language suggestive of adulthood ("graphic" can mean both sophistication and pornographic), does the term "graphic novel" sever the genre's historical connections to children or encourage the ambitions of (what we might now call) "children's comics"? What are the impediments and possibilities of "graphic novel" for discussing comics read by children?
·       How should the intersections between histories of comics and of children's picture books inform our analyses and/or teaching of each?
·       What sort of reactions have children's comics gotten from parents and teachers? Is there still suspicion of children's comics? Why or why not?
·       How do child readers engage with comics? How are children's comics reading practices different from those of adults? In particular, how has the digital age affected the ways in which children access and read comics?
·       What do the changing boundaries of "children's comics" reveal about the social constructions of childhoods?
·       How is childhood represented in comics that are not specifically intended for children?
·       What is "childish" about comics? How have accusations of childishness helped to shape the history of comics?
·       How do children's comics fit into the larger debate over diversity and inclusion in children's literature?
·       What do the differences and similarities between children's comics across cultures reveal about the medium and its audience(s)? How might a dialogue between histories of the "big three" comics producers (U.S., France, Japan) and histories of producers from other cultures (say, India and Mexico) improve our understanding of the field?
·       How do the histories of comics in countries that imposed some version of a "comics code" (say, U.S., U.K., Australia) compare with the histories of comics in countries that have not (say, Japan)?
·       How might we draw upon new research - such as that by Lara Saguisag (2019) and Qiana Whitted (2019) - to rewrite histories of comics for young readers, more carefully examining the genre's racialized visions of childhood, citizenship, and activism?
CV and 350-word abstract to Aaron Kashtan (aaronkashtan at gmail.com<mailto:aaronkashtan at gmail.com>) and Philip Nel (philnel at ksu.edu<mailto:philnel at ksu.edu>). Deadline: March 10, 2020.

MLA 2021 Special Session CFP: Decolonizing Comics and/as Activism (Deadline: 03/15/20)
Decolonizing Comics and/as Activism
Call for papers for a non-guaranteed proposed session at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention on January 7-10, 2021, in Toronto, Canada. This panel is sponsored by the Comics and Graphic Narrative Forum.
Academic histories of comics are too often colonial, in their focus on America, France, and Japan and in the aesthetic criteria they favor. Yet, when we tell history in this colonial, Eurocentric way, we leave out many perspectives, particularly those of colonized and indigenous peoples. Ken Coats defines global indigenous people through their activism when he says indigenous groups have a history of "participating in protests organized against colonial powers, global influences, [and] environmental degradation." Comics have activist histories around the globe: Kavita Daiya has noted how comics have been used to protest against gender violence and environmental degradation in South Asia; Margaret Galvan, Martin Lund, and Justin Green have detailed comics' rich history within activist movements in the United States; and Jacob Høiglit has observed how contemporary Arab comics critique patriarchal society. This panel will explore the ways indigenous peoples and colonized people have used comics as part of their activism, in their fight to protect their cultures and resources, and in their efforts to speak up or speak back to colonizers.
Through this exploration, this session also interrogates the idea of decolonizing comics studies. To decolonize comics means, in part, to seek out comics from and about oppressed peoples, being mindful of the relative ease with which White, European/American authors can (inappropriately) come to speak for indigenous and colonized peoples. To avoid replicating colonialist power structures, we hope this panel brings attention to lesser-known comics, texts that have not been widely distributed in North America or Western Europe; in particular, we are interested in comics circulated through and by activist movements-comics for whom scholars are not the intended audience, such as the multivolume Kickstarter-funded Indigenous comics collection Moonshot, Highwater Press's graphic novel series by and about Indigenous peoples, Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaa's Red: A Haida Manga, and many others. Proposed papers might consider the following questions and themes.
·       How have comics been connected to activist movements resisting colonialism around the world?
·       How have colonized and indigenous peoples and their allies used comics to call attention to environmental, economic, and social problems?
·       What are the historical and material relationships between comic texts (e.g. Herge's Tintin) and colonialism?
·       How do comics articulate and challenge the legacy of colonialism around the world?
·       What different forms-both print and digital-have activist comics taken in various cultures?
·       How does the grassroots or self-published nature of comics in activist movements shape their content?
Please submit a 250 word abstract and short bio to Rachel Kunert-Graf (rachgraf at gmail.com<mailto:rachgraf at gmail.com>) and Leah Misemer (lsmisemer at gmail.com<mailto:lsmisemer at gmail.com>) by March 15th.  Questions before the deadline are also welcome.

MLA 2021 Guaranteed Session CFP: New Flashpoints in Comics History (Deadline: 03/15/20)
New Flashpoints in Comics History
Call for Papers for a guaranteed roundtable panel sponsored by the Forum for Comics and Graphic Narratives at the Modern Language Association (MLA) Annual Convention, January 7-10, 2021 in Toronto, ON.
"For all the vibrant scholarship emerging around comics today, the medium remains a largely unplumbed and uncanonized field of texts you've never heard of." -Ramzi Fawaz, "A Queer Sequence: Comics as a Disruptive Medium" (2019)
Certain moments in comics have been regarded as pivotal in our histories and often bear repeating in scholarship, including R. Crumb's shaping of the underground and subsequent movements through publishing Zap Comix in 1968; the near-simultaneous release of a number of now canonized works like Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen, and the first collected volume of Maus in 1986; and the immediate success of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis in 2003 and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home in 2006. Alongside all of these moments, there exist countless untold histories of comics. New scholarship by the likes of Lara Saguisag (Incorrigibles and Innocents [2018]), Qiana Whitted (EC Comics [2019]), and Rebecca Wanzo (The Content of Our Caricature [2020]) are plumbing these depths. This guaranteed roundtable encourages further tracing of new genealogies of comics history by asking participants: What are the defining moments in comics history that have been overlooked? We welcome work especially on diverse creators and global contexts.
Please send 250-word abstracts and bios by 15 March 2020 to Margaret Galvan (margaretgalvan at ufl.edu<mailto:margaretgalvan at ufl.edu>). Responses to individual submissions will be sent out by the beginning of April. All prospective presenters must be current MLA members by no later than April 2020.
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