Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Graduate Student Comics Conference April 2014 - CFP

Great news! In April, CMU (with a funding assist from WMU) will be holding its second annual ComiConference, a graduate student comics conference that will feature comics scholar Matt Smith as its plenary speaker. I strongly encourage you to apply - I will be driving over to CMU later in the day, but if a number of you created a panel or wanted to submit individually, you could probably carpool over. I attended the conference last year as the plenary speaker, and I had a wonderful time. Dr. Joseph Michael Sommers, my counterpart at CMU, has gathered a great group of students at the undergraduate and graduate level who are studying comics. You would have the opportunity to share your ideas with them and to meet other students from EMU and OSU, as well. To give you an idea of the potential audience, at least 260 people attended the event last year.

Here is the official Call for Papers:

Central Michigan University is hosting its second annual ComiConference on April 17th. The much-lauded plenary speaker will be Wittenberg University's own Matt Smith (not the Eleventh Doctor Himself, but the notable comics scholar!). There's no registration fee and no membership fee. If you're interested, send your abstracts and titles to Joseph Michael Sommers (somme1jm@cmich.edu) by Feb. 28th. Papers should be about 8-10 pp long. Pre-designed panels are welcome.

This is a fantastic opportunity to break into comics scholarship at a growing national presence in the comics studies world, so even if you've never done a close reading of comics before, go for it! Any and all questions about graphic novels, comics, illustrated literature, visual narrative, visuoverbal mediation, whatever you want to call it -- it's all welcome!

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