[Comicsstudiessociety] (another) introduction

[Kalervo Sinervo]

I love a good bandwagon. I’ve been doing comics studies research since undergrad at Simon Fraser, where I wrote my honour’s thesis on intertextuality, semiotics, and The Sandman. During my MA in English at Concordia, my interests expanded into materiality, as I wrestled with what I found to be inadequacies in adaptation theory to account for network culture. So I ended up writing my Master’s research project on differential media—this time using Watchmen as a narrative assemblage to test my ideas.

In my Interdisciplinary Humanities PhD at Concordia, I started getting interested in digital comics and thinking about users rather than readers. I’ve published a few times on digital comics piracy in Amodern, a chapter in the book Educational, Psychological, and Behavioral Considerations in Niche Online Communities (IGI), as well as a chapter in the upcoming The Comics World from Mississippi. I’ve also done some work on digital comics foundations, with a chapter in Make Ours Marvel (Texas) and another in the recent Comics Studies Guidebook (Rutgers). I served two terms as the VP Communications for the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics/Société canadienne pour l’etude de la bande dessinée<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://comics-scholars.com/wp/__;!!KGKeukY!jJZUMlAeiTjL8Gc2hRqKbEk2TFM6XcwJvQwxfD8OffMhmLKIfLL_ulSnYdA4JMnc4i5ha0ODwuhv$ >, and taught Concordia’s undergraduate graphic novels course for four years.

Outside comics studies, I’m focused on games studies and media industries. I like thinking about dispersed creativity and problematizing the idea of developer “vision.” My dissertation looked at transmedia, videogame spaces, and Gotham City, and I’ve put out a bit of work in this area too. But comics are never out of the picture: most recently, I submitted an article with a co-author on comics and pain language and we’re waiting to hear back from the journal.

I’ve been really lucky to find excellent co-authors to push projects forward, and most of the publications I mentioned above were completed with colleagues, mentors, friends. I find writing collaborations are precious in comics studies, so if you ever want to chat about a project, hit me up. Right now, I’m a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Calgary, working with Bart Beaty—and kind of on loan to Ben Woo over at Carleton, where I’m excited to be doing some research with his team on conventions as I eke out time for the job search and turning my dissertation into a book. In whatever time is left, I’m experimenting with decontextualized comics panels on Twitter as @badpanels<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/BadPanels__;!!KGKeukY!jJZUMlAeiTjL8Gc2hRqKbEk2TFM6XcwJvQwxfD8OffMhmLKIfLL_ulSnYdA4JMnc4i5ha8tF2q0R$ > and making sure we never forget the weird and hilarious stuff in the archives.

Stay safe, stay healthy, stay strong

----------------
Kalervo A. Sinervo, PhD (he/him)
FRQSC Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Calgary
badpanels.com<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://badpanels.com__;!!KGKeukY!jJZUMlAeiTjL8Gc2hRqKbEk2TFM6XcwJvQwxfD8OffMhmLKIfLL_ulSnYdA4JMnc4i5ha3DdgUM8$ >
@kalervideo<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://twitter.com/kalervideo__;!!KGKeukY!jJZUMlAeiTjL8Gc2hRqKbEk2TFM6XcwJvQwxfD8OffMhmLKIfLL_ulSnYdA4JMnc4i5ha6ErG0cd$ >





On Nov 17, 2020, at 4:27 AM, Can Yalcinkaya via ComicsStudiesSociety <comicsstudiessociety at lists.osu.edu<mailto:comicsstudiessociety at lists.osu.edu>> wrote:

[△EXTERNAL]


Hi all,

It was lovely to see everybody's introductions, so I thought I'd introduce myself as well. My interest in comics studies started as an undergraduate student in Turkey in the early 2000s. I was part of a comics studies mailing list, which led to two edited collections, Cizgili Hayat Kilavuzu (2004) and Cizgili Kenar Notlari (2005) both edited by Levent Cantek, as well as a journal of comics studies called Seruven (Adventure), which lasted 10 issues between 2004 and 2007. I was a contributor to all three publications and served as an editor in the last four issues of Seruven. In 2006, I completed a master's thesis on two Turkish monthly comics anthologies and their politics of subversion of the dominant culture through carnivalesque, punk, underground themes and images.

I moved to Australia in 2007 and did a PhD in Media Studies (not on comics), but continued to research comics on the side. Since 2013, I have also started to develop a creative practice. I edited an anthology of comics titled Resist Comics: Scenes from the Gezi Resistance (2015), in response to the Occupy Gezi Park protests in Turkey. I contributed to comics anthologies in Turkey and Australia, and made a series of mini comics. I have an interest in using comics as a medium of research communication and most of the comics I have produced are based on research. My comic "Homoti: The Turkish Gay E.T. Remake" (published in Sequentials in 2018) makes use of queer phenomenology and monster theory to analyse the Turkish z-grade remake of E.T. in the context of the history of LGBTQI communities and representation of gay men in Turkish cinema - https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.sequentialsjournal.net/issues/issue1.2/yalcinkaya.html__;!!KGKeukY!jJZUMlAeiTjL8Gc2hRqKbEk2TFM6XcwJvQwxfD8OffMhmLKIfLL_ulSnYdA4JMnc4i5ha7N03api$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.sequentialsjournal.net/issues/issue1.2/yalcinkaya.html__;!!KGKeukY!lbF4N_JcqsOIYHTSb4BEw-y9hhvnlZGoP4goskIPB83jc6JqoygyupnGRGN5-Fsm0uS-aU549Wn3$>

As part of this interest to produce and promote comics-based research/graphic scholarship, I became involved with the Graphic Social Science Research Network, co-convened by Mark Carrigan and myself. However, this network has largely been on hiatus for the last year or so - https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://medium.com/@GraphicSocSci__;!!KGKeukY!jJZUMlAeiTjL8Gc2hRqKbEk2TFM6XcwJvQwxfD8OffMhmLKIfLL_ulSnYdA4JMnc4i5ha7O1rmiZ$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://medium.com/@GraphicSocSci__;!!KGKeukY!lbF4N_JcqsOIYHTSb4BEw-y9hhvnlZGoP4goskIPB83jc6JqoygyupnGRGN5-Fsm0uS-ae6puJ_V$> - if anyone would like to be involved and help me re-activate it, please let me know.

I am currently employed as a program manager at Macquarie University in Sydney, and my role does not involve research, however, I try to keep active in this area. I have a few projects in various stages of development. One major project underway is a series of events on the theme of "Comics and Activism" which will take place at Macquarie University, including two exhibitions, a symposium, a series of talks and workshops, readings and a zine fair, all of which I am co-curating with Dr Justine Lloyd (Department of Sociology, Macquarie University).

Last but not least, not comics-related, but I would like to invite you to an online event, titled Vigil for the Smooth Handfish which will be streamed on 22 November Sunday. The smooth handfish was a type of bottom-dweller found off the coast of Tasmania, which became extinct in 2020. A group of academics and creatives have come together to remember this strange fish and "contemplate loss, grief, the parameters of care, the interconnectedness of conservation and radical hope, and 'collaborative survival'." There is a fantastic line-up of videos from musicians, poets, academics, artists and my contributions is a collaboration with author Dorion Sagan, filmmaker Daz Chandler, artist Safdar Ahmed and psychedelic musician Edwin Montgomery to create a short animated film, illustrating Dorion Sagan's original poem "Smooth Handfish: A Eulogy" written for this occasion. You can register through the Vigil for the Smooth Handfish website to watch the streaming of this event: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.paralleleffect.com/vigil__;!!KGKeukY!jJZUMlAeiTjL8Gc2hRqKbEk2TFM6XcwJvQwxfD8OffMhmLKIfLL_ulSnYdA4JMnc4i5ha-duRckA$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.paralleleffect.com/vigil__;!!KGKeukY!lbF4N_JcqsOIYHTSb4BEw-y9hhvnlZGoP4goskIPB83jc6JqoygyupnGRGN5-Fsm0uS-aRGqzuhW$>

I'll echo others and say that I hope to meet with the members of this list in person at some point in the future.

All the best,
Can
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