Comics medium has long been employed to communicate with a range of audiences from mainstream entertainment to counter-cultural and educational settings. The topics addressed by these comics are equally wide-ranging, from superhero stories to histories of war, and from graphic medicine to activism, to name just a few examples. Comics research, in the meantime, came to encompass not only close-reading of specific texts but also the making of comics as a research method. Through a series of day long events and discussions, Comics Study Day invites participants to take stock of some of these developments and explore comics as a performative medium.

Due to limited capacity, please sign up here for the workshop  via this link.

To help us track numbers and minimize food waste, please sign up for the afternoon book presentation and roundtable discussion here.

PROGRAMME

10:00-13:00: A Wandering Urban Chronicler: Comics Co-Creation Experimental Workshop led by Tânia A. Cardoso

13:30-15:00 Comics and/as Research: Perspectives on Past and Present

15:00-15:20 Coffee Break

15:20-16:50 Roundtable on Comics, Memory, Activism

17:00-17:45 From Nineth Art to Global Language: Closing Comics Workshop led by Melandros Ganas (Project Ippokampos)

DESCRIPTION

10:00-13:00: A Wandering Urban Chronicler: Comics Co-Creation Experimental Workshop led by Tânia A. Cardoso

Join us for a workshop in the streets of Amsterdam to explore everyday life through comic-based research, using walking, drawing, and storytelling and be part of a co-created urban chronicle.

13:30-15:00 Comics and/as Research: Perspectives on Past and Present

More and more researchers across a range of fields opt to use comics to communicate their findings to broader audiences. Beyond the wider outreach, how does comics feed into research and research – into comics? We invite to discuss these ideas with the authors of Out of the Shadows and Skouries in this double book presentation.

With participation of Ozan Ozavci (Utrecht University), Dimitris Dalakoglou and Leonidas Oikonomakis (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Melandros Ganas (Project Ippokampos), chaired by Kristina Gedgaudaitė (University of Amsterdam)

15:00-15:20 Coffee break

15:20-16:50 Comics, Memory Activism: Intersections

From graphic biographies detailing the lives of prominent revolutionaries to digital cartoons used to raise awareness and campaign for social justice, comics both mediate historic activism, protests and other instances of political contention and act as carriers of memory with activist intent. Taking as a starting point two forthcoming publications – The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Cultural Heritage and Conflict and the Special Collection ‘Comics, Memory Activism’ of the journal Memory, Mind and Media – this panel reflects on the intersection of comics and activism.

With participation of Vasiliki Belia (Utrecht University), Clara Vlessing (Utrecht University), Kristina Gedgaudaitė (University of Amsterdam), Thomas van Gaalen (Radbound University) and Marit van de Warenburg (Utrecht University), chaired by Silvia Vari (University of Warwick/University of Amsterdam)

17:00-17:45 From Nineth Art to Global Language: Closing Comics Workshop led by Melandros Ganas (Project Ippokampos)

This workshop is part of the activities of the EU-funded MSCA research project ReCOLLECTED (Grant agreement No 101067507). Organized by Kristina Gedgaudaitė and ASCA Comics Studies, with support of the Netherlands Research School for Literary Studies (OSL) and the Dutch Society for Modern Greek Studies (NGNS).

Image credits: Tânia A. Cardoso, StudioTako.