ImageTexT is a peer-reviewed, open access journal dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of comics and related media. We are published by the English Department at the University of Florida with support from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Our content is available free of charge, and regular issues of ImageTexT will be published three times per year.
A new comix art school, The Sequential Artists Workshop, is soon to open in Gainesville, FL. Please see the website at http://www.sequentialartistsworkshop.org/ for details. The founders of the Sequential Artists Workshop, also called SAW, are running a fundraiser at http://www.indiegogo.com/Creating-The-Sequential-Artists-Workshop.
The following is an excerpt from a letter sent by the school's founders, who include Tom Hart and Leela Corman:
We're starting this school because we recognize more and more the need for intensive training in this artform, and also want to see the good, interesting adventurous artists out there multiply and flourish. That's why we're calling it The Sequential Artists Workshop: our mission is to train and support artists.
The school is being founded by Tom Hart, who has taught cartooning at the School of Visual Arts in New York City for 10 years, and has helped countless amazing students at SVA become artists. Tom says, "Cartooning and graphic novels are becoming bigger and bigger every day. I tutor and teach more and more people who are fascinated by this medium but don’t know it’s workings or don’t know its history, or who just need time and mentoring to practice, learn and work. We want to be a place to for those people to work, to learn the form and to become sequential artists."
You can see the letter in full on our announcement of the Workshop on the ImageTexT News Feed. We at ImageTexT hope that you will extend support to this exciting new organization.
Call for Papers, and Roundtable and Workshop Proposals
Keynote Speaker: Chris Ware
Theme: Epic Narratives
Symposium Dates: October 4 – 6, 2012
Proposal Deadline: June 4, 2012
Columbus College of Art & Design's Mix 2012 is comprised of three events: a symposium, a comics marathon (a student competition), and a comics exhibition.
This call invites proposals for papers, workshops and roundtables for the Comics Symposium, a celebration of and investigation into the art of the comic book, the graphic novel, and other book-length forms of sequential art narrative, featuring keynote guest Chris Ware, author of Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. Consistent with the work of its keynote speaker, the Comics Symposium will be a two-day event for papers, workshops and roundtables, built around the theme "Epic Narratives". Details on the panel topics are below. Some of these panels will also connect to the hands-on workshops and discussion roundtables that follow them.
Designed to bring together a variety of perspectives in an open and welcoming environment, the College encourages submissions from artists, writers, educators, publishers, students, curators, and critics. As a proposal for a paper, workshop or roundtable is being reviewed, consideration will be given to this diverse population. Note that special consideration is also given to proposals which emphasize cross-disciplinary approaches and/or formats, and to roundtables or workshop proposals that connect the symposium theme and its panels to hands-on practice.
Anime and manga are visual culture and media, popular entertainment, commercial products, objects of interest and sometimes obsession – and for many people, their first and sometimes only contact with Japan. Scholars in Japan and around the world have increasingly become interested in the themes, topics, and issues of anime and manga – and of all Japanese popular culture.
The goal of the AX Anime and Manga Studies Symposium is to highlight cutting-edge research and critical thinking about Japanese animation and comics by examining emerging trends in anime and manga studies around the world. Anime Expo is the largest gathering of fans of Japanese popular culture in the U.S., and, as an integral component of the AX program, the Symposium will also serve to introduce anime and manga studies to a general, non-academic audience. Another goal of this event will be to establish crucial connections and facilitate bridging gaps between scholars and fans.
UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels (10th Anniversary Event!)
NEW DEADLINE FOR ABSTRACTS: March 12, 2012
The first UF conference on Comics and Graphic Novels was held in 2002. We ask that you come join us to celebrate our conference's anniversary at "Monsters in the Margins," which will be held on April 13-15. Speakers will include Richard Burt (Medieval and Early Modern Film and Media, Unspeakable Shaxxxspeares), John Cech (Imagination and Innovation: The Story of Weston Woods, Angels and Wild Things: The Archetypal Poetics of Maurice Sendak) and Jonathan Case (artist and writer, Dear Creature).
We have extended the deadline for presentation abstracts to March 12, 2012!
UF Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels (10th Anniversary Event!)
The first UF conference on Comics and Graphic Novels was held in 2002. We ask that you come join us to celebrate our conference's anniversary at "Monsters in the Margins," which will be held on April 13-15.
In any crisis, whether economic or cultural, there is a sense of an unimaginable danger right around the corner. These unknown and unfathomable terrors fascinate the imagination and dramatically play out our anxieties in a more cognitively relatable form—we attempt to embody them, to transplant them, or to make them somehow tangible—yet the underlying terror persists. The narratives and mediums we channel our terrors into become our monsters.
In the midst of the first true economic crisis of the 21st century, we return to these sites with renewed curiosity. How can we depict the sublime terror of our anxieties? How can we convey our unabashed horror through image and text, and communicate those feelings? Why do we keep trying to re-imagine the same monstrous templates, especially when the tools of a craft are perpetually unable to represent the unimaginable?
The 9th University of Florida Comics Conference hopes to address these issues by welcoming any and all explorations into the representation of monsters and the monstrous in a visual/textual form. We are especially interested in how text augments the imaginative image (or vice versa) and approaches horror in ways that help the conscious mind endure and (hopefully) resolve the trauma that the unknown antagonizes within us. From traditional genres to new horizons of horror, we seek to examine the monsters of media and attempt to understand how the medium influences the message.
The "monsters" in our conference's title are open for interpretation. Presentations do not need to address the literal representation/illustration of monsters (e.g. zombies, vampires and werewolves, oh my!), but they should address the presence (or absence) of the monstrous, traumatic or unsettling.
From the Sequential Artists Workshop:
SAW (The Sequential Artists Workshop) is accepting applications for its single-year intensive program, perfect for serious students of comic book storytelling and sequential art. Whether your interest is personal stories, graphic novels, or genre comics or whether your concern is for entertainment, literary depth, or personal expression, then our program is for you.
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ImageTexT is published by the Department of English at the University of Florida.