It’s that time of year again! We of the MLA Discussion Group on Comics and Graphic Narratives are proud to announce our sessions for the 129th Annual MLA Convention, to be held 9-12 January 2014 in Chicago. Once more we’ll be doing our full allotment of panels—three, including one in collaboration with the MLA Division on Literature and Other Arts—and a social event, namely a cash bar co-sponsored by the MLA Division on Children’s Literature.
Here are the details (click on the links to read more about each individual panel):
Session 388: Transnational Comics, co-sponsored with the Division on Literature and Other Arts
Session 428: Cash Bar, arranged by the Division on Children’s Literature and the Discussion Group on Comics and Graphic Narratives
Session 595: Comics and Fine Arts
Session 768: Collaboration in Comics
Besides the above sessions that we’re sponsoring, MLA 2014 will of course also include other sessions and papers devoted to comics (which we’ll list in a future post). Comics studies within the MLA continues to make noise! Do bookmark this blog and check back in over the weeks to come, as the convention draws nearer! We’ll be posting abstracts of all the papers in our sessions by Dec. 20.
Note: Only a limited number of MLA sessions are open to the general public (see the MLA website here). That does not include our sessions, which are open only to registered participants in the convention. For more information about the convention, including registration costs, see the homepage for MLA 2014.
(A little self-promotion): There is also panel 563. Postcolonial Graphic Memoirs on Saturday, 11 January, 1:45–3:00 p.m., Erie, Sheraton Chicago (http://www.mla.org/program_details?prog_id=563&year=2014)
Thanks for this heads-up, Michelle! Greatly looking forward to this session, which, I note, comes right before our session on “Comics and Fine Arts”! Sounds like a great lineup and an opportunity to learn quite a bit. 🙂
This is Charles Hatfield, BTW. Michelle, did we not meet at ICAF 2011 and discuss the work of Pahé? And will you be talking this time about the work of Christophe N’galle Edimo and Simon Pierre Mbumbo, as excerpted here: http://wordswithoutborders.org/graphic-lit/from-malamine [?]
PS. We hope to run a post listing all other comics and graphic narrative-related papers and panels at MLA 2014, including yours; however, we’re waiting until we get the printed program for the conference, because the searchable online program has not proven very accurate and does not allow us to filter for comics-related content. It will be easier for us to skim the printed program with a highlighter and THEN look for the content in the online program by name!
It doesn’t look, at least at first, as if the comics-themed content will be quite as full as last year’s MLA, but, again, we need to see the whole program to know that for sure.
In the meantime, I will definitely plan on making your session!
Yes, we met at ICAF 2011 and my Pahé presentation became an article in Eurpean Comic Art and you are correct, my MLA paper is on the BD by Chrisophe N’galle Edimo and Simon Pierre Mbumbo.
Ah, I need to go back and take a closer look at my copies of European Comic Art then. 🙂
Hope to see your panel, and to meet up again, in Chicago! Thanks.
I am proposing a volume in the MLA Approaches to teaching series on Alison Bechdel’s FUN HOME. If you have taught it in any context, and/or if you would be interested in submitting an essay for this volume, please see http://news.commons.mla.org/…/ or email me at gardiner@uic.edu. Thanks, Judith Kegan Gardiner
This does indeed sound relevant to our blog! And a worthy addition to the MLA Approaches series. Thanks for the information! 🙂