NNCORE 2013. International Conference in Comics Studies
University of Helsinki, Finland, May 23-25, 2013
Organized by the Nordic Network for Comics Research in cooperation with the University of Helsinki and The Finnish Comics Society.
The NNCORE conference provides a major international forum for presenting and sharing recent research in comics studies. The NNCORE advisory board members Jan Baetens (University of Leuven, Belgium), Bernd Dolle-Weinkauff (Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany), Thierry Groensteen (independent scholar, France), Ann Miller (University of Leicester, UK) and Roger Sabin (University of the Arts, London, UK) will speak and/or comment on papers at the event.
We invite proposals for presentations in comics studies in any discipline in the human and social sciences. Preference will be given, but not limited, to papers that relate to the NNCORE research themes:
- Telling stories, challenging convention
- Comics in between: intertextuality and inspiration
- Contesting and creating identities and communities
- The power of comics: propaganda and censorship
- Manga and the globalization of comics
- Learning from and through comics: comics as a didactic tool
Please submit an abstract (max 500 words) in English for a twenty-minute presentation. The abstracts should be e-mailed to Kai Mikkonen at kai.mikkonen@helsinki.fi by Nov 10, 2012. Please include your title and institutional affiliation(s). Selected participants will be informed by Dec 15, 2012. For any practical questions please contact Warda Ahmed at warda.ahmed@sarjakuvaseura.fi.
NNCORE is a Nordic comics research network funded by the Danish Research Council (De Frie Forskningsråd) for a two year period ending summer 2013. For more information about NNCORE activities please see the website (www.sdu.dk/nncore), which includes further contact information or contact the NNCORE manager, Anne Magnussen, magnussen@hist.sdu.dk.
The NNCORE advisory board members who will attend the conference:
Dr Ann Miller was until last year a senior lecturer at the University of Leicester, and is now a University Fellow. Her book, Reading bande dessinée: critical approaches to French-language comic strip, was published by Intellect in 2007. She is joint editor of the bi-annual journal European Comic Art. She is currently working, with Murray Pratt, on a book on autobiography in bande dessinée.
Dr Bernd Dolle-Weinkauff’s principal fields of research are children’s and youth literature, picture books, comics, graphic novels and manga. He received his PhD in 1983 and 2012 the title of an Honorary Professor of Kecskemét University (Hungary). In 1983 he started working with comics with the research project “Comics for young readers in West Germany” (1983-1989), Goethe University Frankfurt. His expertise includes comics and cartoon films copyright issues, readership questions, and media legislation, among other things. He was a member of the jury for the “Max-and-Moritz-Award” for comics in Germany (1986-1994), and he is the director of the Institute’s comics collection since 1986, and former President of the “Society for children’s and youth literature Germany/Switzerland” (2004-2012). Together with Jean-Marie Bouissou (Paris) and Marco Pellitteri, Dr Dolle-Weinkauff founded the European Manga Research Network (2006). He is the author of Comics. Geschichte einer populären Literatur form in Deutschland seit 1945 (1990) and co-editor (with Hans-Heino Ewers and CarolaPohlmann) of the yearbook Kinder und Jugendliteraturforschung (since 1999).
Jan Baetens is professor of cultural studies at the University of Leuven (Belgium). His research interests are word and image studies as well as French poetry (both fields are not incompatible!). Amongst his recent publications are: Hergé écrivain (new edition, Paris, Flammarion, 2006) and Cent ans de bande dessinée (a collection of poetry presenting the ideal comics library; Brussels, Les Impressions Nouvelles, 2007). He is chief editor of the peer-reveiwed e-journal Image (&) narrative. With Hugo Frey, he is currently writing a book on the graphic novel for Cambridge University Press (to appear in 2013).
Dr Roger Sabin is Reader in Popular Culture at Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design, University of the Arts London. His books include Adult Comics: An Introduction (Routledge), and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (Phaidon). He serves on the editorial boards of the main academic journals in the field of comics scholarship, and reviews graphic novels for the press and radio.
Thierry Groensteen was born in Brussels in 1957, Thierry Groensteen has curated the Comics Museum in Angoulême from 1993 to 2001. He has also been a scriptwriter, and the chief-editor of two important journals: Les Cahiers de la bande dessinee and Neuvième Art. He is the founder of the publishing company L’An 2, now a department of the group Actes Sud. He teaches at the Ecole européenne supérieure de l’Image, in Angoulême. He is the author of numerous books about the history, the semiotics and the aesthetics of comics, including Un objet culturel non identifié (2006) and La Bande dessinée, son histoire et ses maîtres (2009). His Système de la bande dessinée (1999) has been translated in several countries, including the United States (The System of Comics) and Japan. A follow-up of Système de la bande dessinée, entitled Bande dessinée et narration, was published in September 2011.