Paraliterary Narratives: Reassessing the ‘Graphic Novel’
Paraliterary Narratives Conference University of Northampton, Avenue Campus Friday, 6th June 2008
The School of Arts, University of Northampton, UK
The term ‘graphic novel’ is an intensely contested term that covers the pop zeitgeist of American superhero comics to high conceptual art. Just how to define the genre is only one a series of critical conundrums that Samuel R. Delany’s term ‘paraliterary’ scarcely addresses, but offers a starting point for reconsideration. Alongside the complexity of definition comes the problem of critical vocabulary and approaches. That language and methodologies used to discuss prose, film, and non-narrative visual art sometimes fit, but often don’t, is part of that issue. Just how are we to discuss an art form that has in the last 25 years gathered an increasingly serious readership and seen the emergence of many major new artists and writers, but struggles with critical credibility? It is, undoubtedly, a genre greater that the sum of its aesthetic parts incorporating drawing, narrative fiction and, perhaps, cinema, into an integrated, fully realised, artistic form that matches any other in terms of its expressive possibilities.
Programme
Programme Download
8.00-9.00 Registration with tea and coffee (The Foyer, Avenue Campus)
9.00-10.00 Conference welcome and housekeeping (Main Hall)
Plenary session: Professor Philip Tew Title: TBC
10.00-11.30 Parallel sessions
Historical Representation and the Graphic Novel (Room MY122; Chair Dr Chris Ringrose)
David Simmons Postmodern literary-historical pastiche in the contemporary graphic novel'
Laura Hilton Re-presenting the past in the graphic novel: Alan Moore's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Volume 2 (2003)
Laura Perna Graphic Novel as History: an Italian Job
Mel Gibson “They never moved. Forty-one years in the same house”: Representing the past in the Raymond Briggs' (1998) Ethel and Ernest and Bryan Talbot's (2007) Alice in Sunderland
Revisioning the Hero (Room The Boardroom; Chair Dr N. Wiseman-Trowse)
Steven Byrd “Revising the Revision” - defining a descriptive line between the advances of the revisionist superhero comics of the 70's and 80's, and the regressions of the 'grim 'n gritty' comics of the 1990's
Rikke Cortsen Post-post-modern Joker: Aarbitrary identity in Arkham Asylum
Sirui Huang Wish I Could Fly Like Superman: An Analysis of Motion, Closure, and Superman's First Flight
Lorna Piatti Blood, Biceps and Beautiful Eyes: Representations of Masculinity in Saint Seiya
Tea and Coffee 11.30-13.00
12.00 -13.30 Parallel Sessions
Exploring Identity (Room The Boardroom; Chair Professor Philip Tew)
Ariel Kahn From Darkness into Light: Reframing Notions of Self and Other in Contemporary Israeli Graphic Narratives
Dean Chan Towards a Cultural History and Critical Pedagogy of Asian-American Graphic Novels'
Christina Parte Gender non conformism/ gender fluidity and the representation of lesbian/ homosexual desire in Jaime Hernandez's Locas and Akimi Yoshida's Banana Fish
Questions of Form and Genre in the Graphic Novel Part 1 (Room MY122; Chair Dr David Simmons)
Julia Round Mobility of voice and view in comics: propositions for a new taxonomy
Aaron Meskin Comics as Performance
Daniel Berry 'The role of typography as a supporting character in the graphic novel'
Lunch 13.30-14.15
14.15 - 15.45 Parallel sessions
Questions of Form and Genre in the Graphic Novel Part 2 (Room The Boardroom; Chair Dr Lawrence Phillips)
Daniel Wüllner The Graphic Novel and Serialisation
Sarah Lightman Diary Drawing- the most revealing form of autobiography?
Simona Porro Architecture and Narration in Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No -Towers
Pedagogy and the Graphic Novel (Room MY122; Chair Dr Chris Ringrose)
Tom Lolis Teaching Pop Culture Comics: Transmetropolitan Metanarratives of Future Past
Zisca Burton Students Reading and Responding to Art Spiegelman's Maus
Adrielle Mitchell Teaching the Graphic Novel
Tea and coffee 15.45-16.00
16.00 - 17.30 Final Session Questions of Form and Genre in the Graphic Novel Part 3 (Room The Boardroom; Chair Dr Nick Heffernan)
N Wiseman-Trowse Marvel or Miracle: (Re)Placing the Original in Alan Moore's Marvelman
Vasileios Sakkos Layers of Skin: Exposing Comic Book Organic Tissue
Eileen O'Neill The 9th Art: Comics and Cultural Capital
5.30 Conference close, wine and nibbles (The Foyer)
Dr Lawrence Phillips,
Paraliterary Narratives Conference,
Media, English and Culture
School of Arts
University of Northampton
Avenue Campus,
St George’s Avenue,
Northampton,
NN2 6JD
Telephone: +44 01604 893293
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