Oxford Comics Network

Studies in Comics Editorial Assistant - Role Description 2023.pdf

We are SO EXCITED to announce the final programme for our conference "COMICS AND/AS RESISTANCE"!!

We have 47 amazing speakers and a roundtable on why and how we study comics!

Find out more and register - in person or online - here: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/comicsresistance

TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

Comics and/as Resistance This conference brings together a wide range of scholars and creators to explore the poetics and politics of resistance within comics and graphic literature. It is organised by the Oxford Comics Network at the University of Oxford (UK), a research network exploring the power, politics, and potential...

A reminder that the deadline for abstracts for our June 2023 conference 'COMICS AND/AS RESISTANCE' is tomorrow 31 January 2023. There's still time!!

Info here: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/call-for-papers-comics-and/as-resistance

TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

Call for Papers | Comics and/as Resistance This conference seeks to bring together a wide range of scholars and creators to explore the poetics and politics of resistance within comics and graphic literature. Comics is a highly diverse and versatile medium, able to speak across boundaries, languages, temporalities, and cultures. This kind of...

TODAY at 5.30pm!

The Oxford Comics Network and The Phoenix at the Story Museum in Oxford!

There are still spaces available - email us (comics[at]http://torch.ox.ac.uk) or sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/comics-at-the-oxford-story-museum-tickets-519543868697

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The Phoenix comic

Book your free place at our private view of the KA-BOOM! exhibition at the The Story Museum this Thursday! We'll be hearing from Tom Fickling from The Phoenix comic and Peter Kessler from Comic Art Festival Podcast followed by a private view of the amazing comics exhibition!!

TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

EXCITING NEWS!

We're delighted to announce further details of our event NEXT WEEK at the Story Museum in Oxford!

Peter Kessler (LICAF) will be in conversation with Tom Fickling from The Phoenix followed by a private view of the KA-BOOM! comics exhibition.

KA-BOOM! The Art of Creating Comics has been created by the Story Museum in partnership with The Phoenix, Rebellion and Beano. It takes visitors on an interactive journey through the comic-making process in order to encourage the next generation of comic artists and writer.

This event is free but registration is required.

Please register here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/comics-at-the-oxford-story-museum-tickets-519543868697 or contact us directly to book a place (comics[at]torch.ox.ac.uk)!

TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

Comics at the Oxford Story Museum Join the Oxford Comics Network at the Oxford Story Museum!

The deadline for proposals for the conference Comics and/as Resistance is 31 January 2023! There's still time to find out more and put together your proposal. We can't wait to read it!

More information about the Network - and a text version of the CfP - is available on our website: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/call-for-papers-comics-and/as-resistance

Save the Dates! We have four exciting events coming up between January and March 2023.

More info on our website: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/comics -740596 and further details to follow soon!

We're SO EXCITED to announce the Call for Papers for our 2023 conference ‘Comics and/as Resistance’!!

Thursday 22 June and Friday 23 June 2023
In person at the University of Oxford (UK) and online

This conference seeks to bring together a wide range of scholars and creators to explore the poetics and politics of resistance within comics and graphic literature. Comics is a highly diverse and versatile medium, able to speak across boundaries, languages, temporalities, and cultures. This kind of formal flexibility makes it a particularly potent form for mediating resistance and resistance narratives. We understand resistance as a theme in a broad sense, from acts of political defiance to cultural practices that challenge perceived hegemonies. Resistance can also be a useful concept with which to examine the way that comics as a medium engages with categorizations, ideas about cultural legitimacy, and dominant forms of storytelling and historical representation. How are stories and histories of resistance mediated through comics? How are resisters and their agency depicted? How do comics creators contest dominant narratives and formal expectations and constraints? How is ‘resistance’ conceived of and enacted within the comics medium?

We invite papers that engage with these questions, and with resistance more broadly as a theme and/or as a mode of critical enquiry. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• Depictions and/or mediations of historical acts of resistance, resistance networks, and the role of comics within cultural memory
• Representations of contemporary resistance movements
• Examples of comics being used to challenge dominant/hegemonic discourses and/or contribute to political discourses of resistance
• Formal conceptions of resistance within comics, for example the use of sound as a means of ‘resisting’ the silence of the medium; forms of hybridity than could be understood as resistance between text and image; resistance through the use of frames, the gutter, and text
• Histories of publication, distribution, and reception, particularly within transnational and global contexts
• Comics and/in translation
• Issues of genre, such as tensions between graphic fiction, memoir, and non-fiction
• The role of comics within pedagogies of resistance
• Comics as a collaborative form of resistance
• Comics and/as adaptation
• Graphic journalism

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers to be delivered in English. Please submit your abstract (max. 250 words) and a short biographical note (max. 75 words) to Dr Alex Lloyd (Lead Convenor, Oxford Comics Network) and the conference committee (Laura Bergin, Cailee Davis, Carolin Gluchowski, Luise Morawetz), using this form: https://forms.office.com/e/B6rsF2Fka5. The deadline for submissions is 31 January 2023. Notifications will be made by 15 February 2023. A publication of selected papers is planned. Please direct any queries to [email protected].

The Oxford Comics Network at the University of Oxford (UK) brings together students, academics, and practitioners from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to explore the power, politics, and potential of the comics form.

https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/comics

Step into the world of composer Arvo Pärt through Joonas Sildre's graphic adaptation of his life and music! Hear Joonas in conversation with Philip Bullock, with live music and drawing! On Monday 21 November at Trinity College. Part of the Music at Oxford festival 'Arvo Pärt… and a Littlemore', in partnership with the Estonian Cultural Foundation.

Tickets are available here: https://www.musicatoxford.com/whats-on/between-two-sounds/



TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities
Music at Oxford
Estonian Embassy in London

Between Two Sounds | Music at Oxford Between Two Sounds is a multimedia event that's part of the ARVO PÄRT...and a Littlemore festival including music and live drawing. Book now.

We're looking forward to our first Oxford Comics Symposium THIS THURSDAY - online and in person at the University of Oxford! There's still time to register to attend. Visit our website to find out more and sign up: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/oxford-comics-symposium

The first meeting of our new ethnoGRAPHIC book club takes place tomorrow - Thursday Week 3!

The ethnoGRAPHIC Book Club combines a love of graphic novels with that of ethnographic practice.

Reading one book per term, the club gathers for relaxed conversation, tea/coffee and snacks, and a communal appreciation for the work of renowned artists, anthropologists, journalists, historians, memoirists and more.

Termly books are selected based on the theme of the Oxford Comics Network’s June 2023 conference ‘Comics and/as Resistance’ and will bridge the converging worlds of comics, graphic works, and the social sciences. The book club is open to current students - undergraduates and graduate students - at the University of Oxford!

Visit our webspace for more info and to sign up! https://torch.ox.ac.uk/comics

TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

There's still time to sign up to our first event of the academic year!

Join us tomorrow to hear Chester Scoville (University of Toronto Mississauga) on “The Doom Patrol and the Heroism of Strangeness”. 5.30pm GMT!

Find out more and register here:
https://torch.ox.ac.uk/event/the-doom-patrol-and-the-heroism-of-strangeness

Our first event of the term is coming up next week on Thursday 20 October!

“The Doom Patrol and the Heroism of Strangeness” – Chester Scoville (University of Toronto Mississauga). Join us at 5.30pm GMT!

Find out more and register here: https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/the-doom-patrol-and-the-heroism-of-strangeness



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We are SO EXCITED to share our digital term card!!

Find out what the Oxford Comics Network is up to between October and December 2022.

There's plenty to get involved with - either online or in person!

More info on our website: https://torch.ox.ac.uk/comics

Calling all GRADUATE STUDENTS at the University of Oxford! The Oxford Comics Network is looking for enthusiastic graduate students to join the team!

Visit our website to find out more about our work and events! Please direct any questions to [email protected].

Join us for an amazing workshop - open to all adults - on Monday 13 June in Oxford!

'THINKING WITH COMICS'!

The workshop is free, but booking is essential and places are limited. Register using EventBrite, or email the team!

https://eventbrite.co.uk/e/thinking-with-comics-a-workshop-tickets-325753937797…


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Join us on Monday 7 February, 5pm GMT, for a talk and discussion on Quan Zhou Wu’s 'Gente de aquí. Gente de allí. Ensayo gráfico sobre migrantes y españoles' (People from Here. People from There. A Graphic Essay about Migrants and Spaniards)"!

Sign up on Eventbrite, or email comics[at]torch.ox.ac.uk.

TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

Seminar Talk and Discussion on Quan Zhou Wu This talk is part of the Oxford Comics Network Spring Seminar Series 2022.

We're excited to share this term's events!

We'll be posting links to sign up for the individual talks over the course of today!

You can already sign up for our first talk on Monday here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/family-archives-and-material-memory-in-german-graphic-life-writing-tickets-249340503157 or email [email protected].

TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

Our first talk this term is on 24 January: "Family Archives and Material Memory in German Graphic Life Writing" by Dr Alex Lloyd (University of Oxford, UK). No German required!

"Since Reunification in 1990, German literature has seen a boom in ‘family stories’: short and long-form prose works that explore what Anne Fuchs has termed the ‘agitated legacy’ of families' involvement in Na**sm and their private memories of war and dictatorship. In this talk, Dr Alex Lloyd (University of Oxford, UK) examines two recent German graphic narratives that address family histories shaped by Na**sm and the way the texts make use of the material traces that remain."

Sign up here https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/family-archives-and-material-memory-in-german-graphic-life-writing-tickets-249340503157 or email [email protected]

TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities"

"Family Archives and Material Memory in German Graphic Life Writing" This talk is part of the Oxford Comics Network Spring Seminar Series 2022.

Happy new year! We're back with the Oxford Comics Network Spring Seminar Series 2022 – we have talks on European comics and Captain America, and a workshop for researchers exploring how to communicate and conceptualise their research through comics!

TORCH - The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities

This Thursday, 5pm BST 17 June, join us and Dr Hailey Austin for her talk, “Genre-Derived Fetishization: Cat Women in Superhero and Erotic Comics”.

Many modern genres seen today were popularized by pulp magazines that blended illustrations, prose, comics and fan pages. Because of this, several genres such as erotic and superhero comics, have key similarities: namely the use of the anthropomorphic body to fe**shize non-normate bodies. In comics, the anthropomorphic body creates and breaches assumed categories and boundaries, eliciting fear as a result. This talk examines the ways in which superhero comics’ genre conceits were derived from pulp magazines that fe**shized non-normate bodies, or bodies that are not those of cis-gendered, able-bodied, straight white men. This presentation will consider the ways in which commodity fe**shism and the male gaze are used in superhero comics, through the lens of the anthropomorphic body of the jungle girl in pulp magazines and the subsequent creation of the villain Cheetah in Wonder Woman #6 (1943). In these comics, the fe**sh object resides in the costume of the character. However, in erotic comics like Omaha the Cat Dancer, critical fe**shism can be used to shift the fe**sh object from women’s clothing to the anthropomorphic body itself.

DM for the Zoom link!

Tomorrow! 8 June! 5pm! Tuesday 8 June, 5pm UK time

Clémence Sfadj (Fordham University, USA)

Title: “Modernism in the African American funny pages: a study of Jackie Ormes’s “From Dixie to Harlem””

Abstract

Recent scholarship has established the importance of Jackie Ormes’s comics and cartoons in the field of comics studies. The first African American cartoonist, her series ran in the African American press for the first half of the twentieth century, with a readership of an estimated million readers at the peak of her fame. This talk is an invitation to read her work, and in particular her first series, Torchy Brown in “From Dixie to Harlem” (1937–38), as a crucial piece of modernist literature. In the context of the global effort to widen the canon of modernist studies, Jackie Ormes’s serial representation of Torchy Brown, a young Black woman who moves from rural Mississippi to New York during the Harlem Renaissance, appears to be a unique modernist narrative of the American urban experience from the direct perspective of a woman of color. This research explores how Jackie Ormes uses the very qualities that have kept From Dixie to Harlem out of the modernist canon—its middlebrow publication context in a newspaper and its comic strip format—as uniquely fitted tools to represent Torchy’s fictional modernist narrative.