The idea of crisis has become inherent to contemporary reflections on societies globally. In the Ibero-American world, crises and the social disruption they provoke seem to have become the dominant prism through which the world is lived and experienced. At the end of the 20th century, such crises had, for the most part, economic and political origins, though problems of this nature continue to define countries in Iberia and Latin America, new forms of crises have come to the fore: climate change, drug trafficking, terrorism, gender violence, and mass migration, among others. Often interconnected, these crises, and the discourses through which they are articulated – in science and academia, in the media, in politics – have often been represented in cultural production, including literature and cinema. Graphic narratives are no exception, though the way in which these textual formats have been used to convey the notion of crisis is only now beginning to be studied more broadly in academia. As Seeger and Sellnow (2016) argue, crises produce a “meaning deficit” and a communication vacuum leaving a discursive space to be filled by narratives (which may well be at odds with each other). At the same time, contemporary texts, according to Mark Bould (2021), are all engaging, whether deliberately or not, with the Anthropocene, which he identifies as the unconscious of contemporary culture. Graphic narratives are no exception in these corpora of texts and discourses. Indeed, while finally claiming its own space, the graphic medium had been discussed in that liminal interstice between the lettered and the visual arts. Liminality, as a spaced and timed experience of transition and change, is, for Mikhail Bakhtin (1981), the quintessential chronotope of ‘crisis and break in a life’ (248), which can be understood not only at personal, but also at societal level. It is also in these liminal spaces where utopian discourses about new social configuration, both positive (eutopia) and negative (dystopian) are often articulated and represented. This conference will explore how the graphic medium has engaged with narratives of crisis in the Ibero-American world. It is not limited to texts in Spanish or Portuguese, but open to regional and indigenous languages in Iberia and Latin America. We invite abstract submissions of circa 250 words for 20-minute papers, with a short bio note (100 words maximum) to the conference email address by 15 January 2024.
We look forward to receiving proposals whose topics include, but are not limited to:
●Graphic narratives of political, financial and environmental crises
●Individual memoirs and collective memories of crisis
●Historical accounts of crisis
●Strikes, revolts and revolutions
●Social and personal transitions and transitionings
●Crisis and violence (in its multiple forms)
●Utopian, dystopian and eutopian worlds in graphic narratives
●Crisis from the perspective of minority and/or indigenous languages and cultures
●Disaster and climate change in graphic narratives
●Spaces and places of crisis
●Effects of crisis in the production and circulation of graphic narratives
●Genres (e.g. noir, horror, science-fiction, crime) and crises
Event organizers:
Mariano Paz - Associate Professor in Latin American Studies
Xosé P. Boan - Assistant Professor in Iberian Studies
This event is jointly sponsored by the University of Limerick, the Ralahine Centre for Utopian Studies, and iCOn-MICS. The Ralahine Centre, established in 2003, pursues innovative research across disciplines related to utopian theory and practice. iCOn-MICs – Investigation on Comics and Graphic Novels from the Iberian Cultural Area is COST Action aimed at the promotion, dissemination, and networking of researchers on Iberian comics, and funded by the European Union.
There will be no fees for attending this conference.
Interested contributors will be invited to participate in a refereed volume, edited by the conference organisers to be published with an academic press.
Works cited:
Bakhtin, Mikhail; Holquist, Michael; Emerson, Caryl. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays by M. M. Bakhtin. University of Texas Press, 1981.
Bould, Mark. The Anthropocene Unconscious: Climate Catastrophe Culture. Verso, 2021.
Seeger, Matthew W. and Timothy L. Sellnow. Narratives of Crisis: Telling Stories of Ruin and Renewal. Stanford University Press, 2016.
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