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The Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum will be sponsoring three panels at MLA 2026: 180. Adaptation and Opposition through Comics; 246. Canadian Comics, and a Just-in-Time session on Comics in Times of Genocide. Also, check out all the other comics-related panels at this year’s conference. Just in Time: Comics in Times of Genocide Thursday, 8 January 20267:00 PM – 8:15 PMVirtual Session Presiders:Adrienne Resha, U of Virginia Presentations: Click here to access abstracts for this panel’s presentations. 180. Adaptation and Opposition through Comics Friday, 9 January 20268:30 AM to 9:45 AMMTCC – 715A Presiders:Chase Gregory, Bucknell U Robert Nguyen, Lycoming C Presentations: 246. Canadian ComicsRead More →

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In: 2017, Calls for Papers

  Drawing the Line: Comics and Adaptation While comics adaptations have frequently been derided for “dumbing down” great works of literature through adaptation, recent movie adaptations of comics have conquered the box office and brought new attention to the medium. These intriguing developments beg the questions—How might comics be transformed by such adaptations? What is the potential for comics in reworking other forms? Recent books, such as Stephen Tabachnick and Esther Bendit Saltzman’s anthology Drawn from the Classics (2015) and the University of Leicester Conference (2015) on “Comics and Adaptation in the European Context” indicate growing academic interest in issues surrounding comics adaptations. This roundtableRead More →

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In: 2017, Calls for Papers

Graphic Narrative, Comics, and Temporality Whether we consider the fragmentation of time in the Dr. Manhattan chapter of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, or Art Spiegleman’s intermingling of his father’s WWII past with his present as narrator in Maus, rendering time as space has been one of the most unique and commented upon formal aspects of the graphic novel. More recent, innovative graphic narratives that deliberately foreground time include Richard McGuire’s Here and Chris Ware’s Building Stories. This panel seeks new scholarly work on the representation of temporality in comics and graphic narratives, with a particular attention to the formal qualities of comics. PapersRead More →

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In: 2017, Calls for Papers

Alien Lines: Science Fiction Comics The medium of comics—often dominated by genres bound to contemporary concerns or enduring conventions—remains marginal in the study of science fiction. Likewise, the oldest questions driving science fiction scholarship—identity and difference, self and other, chance and futurity—have not been central to comics studies. In short, we have rarely asked: how do the central projects of science fiction manifest in comics form? The Forum on Speculative Fiction and the Forum on Comics and Graphic Narratives therefore invite papers that explore this question. We especially desire proposals focused on the ways difference, otherness and futurity manifest on the comics page. How doesRead More →

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In: 2016, Other Comics Events @ MLA, Uncategorized

Francophone Media(na)tions Thursday, 7 January, 12:00 noon–1:15 p.m., 401, JW Marriott Program arranged by the forum LLC Francophone Presiding: Miléna Santoro, George Washington Univ. “Crossing Trenches in Le cœur des batailles by Jean-David Morvan and Igor Kordey: Textual Analysis of ‘La Marne’ (2007) and ‘Verdun’ (2008),” Anne Cirella-Urrutia, Huston-Tillotson Univ. “Frontiers, Conquests, and the (Re)Birth of the Nation: The Rise of the Comics Western in France at the End of Empire,” Eliza Bourque Dandridge, Duke Univ. ” Fast-Forward Massilia: From Claude McKay to Moussu T (e lei Jovents),” Danielle Marx-Scouras, Ohio State Univ., Columbus   Graphic Interventions: Visual Cultures of the Arab World Thursday, 7Read More →

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In: 2016, Calls for Papers, mla

The 2014 edited collection Contemporary Latina-o Media included no essays on comics. This is not, perhaps, surprising; at present, comics remain marginalized in ways that keep the medium from being as central to cultural and political exchange as print literature, film, television and radio are. However, this very condition makes comics, as a field perpetually “coming of age” yet forever on the margins, productive for thinking about the contemporary disposition of Latina/o culture and politics. The Discussion Group on Comics and Graphic Narratives and the Division on Comparative Studies in Twentieth Century Literature therefore invite papers that explore connections between the medium of comics andRead More →