Comics & Conflicts Conference at the Imperial War Museum: Call for Papers

London's Imperial War Museum is organising a Comics & Conflicts Conference (curated by Panel Borders Alex Fitch) in August, aimed at comics scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts.

Taking place on 19th-20th August, conference speakers and guests will include Charley’s War creator Pat Mills, Martin Barker and Roger Sabin on Doonesbury; Garth Ennis (Troubled Souls, War Story); Jacques Tardi (It Was The War Of The Trenches) and Jean-Pierre Verney (Putain de Guerre). Paul Gravett will chair.

Further details of this very special event (including details on the keynote speakers, special guests and registration) will be announced on the Comica News Blog.

Papers for the conference are welcomed that explore the ways in which comics around the world represent and articulate the experience and impact of war and conflict. For example, topics may include:

• Depictions of conflict in comics created for children.
• Representations of trauma in comic books, graphic novels, manga and other forms of international comics.
• Visual representations of conflict in such places as Afghanistan, Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Korea, The Middle East, Northern Ireland, and Vietnam.
• Journalism, biography, and memoir in comics on conflict.
• Focus on key practitioners such as Guibert, Kubert, Mills, Sacco, Satrapi, Spiegelman, Tardi & Trudeau.
• Comics as a space to depict/critique national ideology.
• Comics as tools of propaganda, both of the state and of protest organisations.

In the first instance please email abstracts of 250 words, with a brief author biography, to a.kahn@roehampton.ac.uk, including ‘Comics & Conflicts 2011’ in the subject heading. The deadline for submissions is 31st March, 2011.

The Comics & Conflicts Conference is organised by Ariel Kahn, Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at Roehampton University, Alex Fitch, presenter of Panel Borders, the UK’s only weekly broadcast radio show about comics, and Paul Gravett, Director of Comica.

The Comics & Conflicts Conference will form part of a larger literary festival being held from 13-21 August 2011, which accompanies the Imperial War Museum’s new exhibition Once Upon A Wartime: Classic War Stories for Children.

• For more information about the exhibition and the festival visit the Imperial War Museum web site.