"Comics and Memory" is an international NNCORE conference organized at the University of Ghent from April 19-21, 2017, in collaboration with the KU Leuven, UCLouvain (GRIT), and the ACME comics research group (University of Liège). This conference examines the complex relationships between comics and memory through the prisms of personal, collective, and medial forms as well as practices of remembering.

The conference is free and open to the public.


PROGRAM

Wednesday 19 April – Personal Memory

8:30 Welcome and registration

8:45 Introduction by Maaheen Ahmed, Benoît Crucifix & Charlotte Pylyser

9:00 – 10:30 Intersections of Personal and Collective Memories

Bieke Willem (Universiteit Gent) “Crisis, Memory, Intimacy in the Spanish Autobiographical Comic. The Case of Lo que me está pasando by Miguel Brieva”

Fiorenzo Iuliano (Università degli Studi di Calgiari) “Drawing on the City’s Memory: Jon Strongbow and the Reinvention of Seattle’s Past”

Nina Schmidt (Freie Universität Berlin) “Sharing Memories of Loss: the Role of Photographs in Graphic Narratives of Bereavement”

Coffee break

11:00 – 12:30 Drawing the Body in Autobiographical Comics

Martha Moreno Linares (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) “La parenthèse by Élodie Durand: Collective Autopathography and the Reconstruction of Memory”

Rachel Miller (The Ohio State University) “Keep Out, Or Else: Diary as Body in Diary of a Teenage Girl and Cruddy”

Eleanor Ty (Wilfrid Laurier University) “The Un-erotic Dancer: Sylvie Rancourt’s Melody”

Lunch

14:00 – 15:30 Graphic Memoirs

Giorgio Busi Rizzi (Università di Bologna/KU Leuven) “Portrait of the Artist as a Nostalgic”

Pedro Moura (FLUL Lisboa/ KU Leuven) “The Ever-Shifting Wall. Edmond Baudoin and the ‘Continuous Poem’ of Autobiography”

E. Dawson Varughese “Remembering India: Textual and Visual Creativity in Banerjee’s Personal and Collective Memory-Making”

Coffee break

16:00 – 17:30 Creative Practices and War Memory

Bettina Egger (University of Salzburg) “Oral History in Emmanuel Guibert’s graphic novels”

Brigitte Friant-Kessler (Université de Valenciennes) “The Colour of Memory in The Red Diary / The Re(a)d Diary”

Maureen Burdock (University of Californa, Davis) “Memory Lines: Retracing Female Ancestral Stories of WWII Era Germany”

18:00 Conference dinner (upon registration)

19:30 – 21:00 Roundtable @ Vooruit: Drawing Memories: Artists’ Talks, with Dominique Goblet, Jeroen Janssen, Pascal Matthey, Tanitoc (moderated by Gert Meesters)


Thursday 20 April – Memory of the Medium

9:00 – 10:0 Keynote Address

Mel Gibson (Northumbria University), “‘It’s All Come Flooding Back.’ Memories of Childhood Comics: Narratives, Practices and Objects”

Coffee break

10:30 – 12:00 Memorializing Franco-Belgian Comics

David Pinho Barros (Universidade do Porto/KU Leuven) “Playing with the Memory of the Clear Line in Philippe Coudray’s L’Ours Barnabé”

Christian Reyns-Chikuma (University of Alberta) “Playing with, Sinking, and Bridging Collective Memories of Comics in Trondheim and Parme’s Spirou, Panique en Atlantique”

Nick Martinez (Cardiff University), “A Trip Down Memory Lane: Canonisation and Reprints of Western Bande Dessinée”

Lunch

13:30 – 15:30 Comics, the Canon and History

Christopher Pizzino (University of Georgia) “Comics History and the Question of Delinquency”

Michael Connerty (IADT/University of the Arts London) “Selective Memory: Art History and the Comic Strip Work of Jack B. Yeats”

Rik Spanjers (University of Amsterdam), “The Historical Comic and the Maus Event”

Michael F. Scholz (Uppsala University) “Historical Primary Sources Provided by Early Comics Historians”

Coffee break

16:00 – 17:00 Memory and the Superhero Genre

Chair: Christophe Dony (Université de Liège)

Jean-Matthieu Méon (Université de Lorraine) “Sons and Grandsons of Origins: Narrative Memory in Mainstream Super-Hero Publishing”

Dragos Manea (University of Bucharest), “The Ethics of Historical Fantasy: Collective Memory and Transgression in The Manhattan Projects (2012-) and Über (2013-)”

19:30 – 21:00 Roundtable @ Vooruit: The Memory of Comics In and Out of the Institutions, with Philippe Capart, Roel Daenen, Simon Grennan, Gunnar Krantz, Pascal Lefèvre, Roger Sabin (moderated by Pedro Moura)


Friday 21 April – Collective Memory

9:00 – 10:00 Keynote Address

Claire Gorrara (Cardiff University), “Connective Histories. Transgenerational Memories of the Second World War in 21st Century French Graphic Novels”

Coffee break

10:30 – 12:00 War Testimonies

Kees Ribbens (NIOD Amsterdam/Erasmus University Rotterdam) “Combining Individual Memory and National History in Classics Illustrated”

Simon Desplanque (Université catholique de Louvain) “Testimonies in Contemporary Franco-Belgian WWII Aviation Comics”

Jacqueline Berndt (Kyoto Seika University/Stockholm University) “Beyond Authenticity: On a New Current of Alternative War Manga”

Susan Hogervorst (Open Universiteit Nederland) “Grasping German WWII Memory Culture through Students’ Oral History Comics about Contemporary Refugees”

Lunch

13:30 – 15:00 Post-Memory

Miriam Piegsa (University of Passau) “Intersubjective Memory Space. Jacques Tardi’s Moi, René Tardi, prisonnier de guerre au Stalag IIB and Florence Silloray’s Le Carnet de Roger in comparison”

Christina Kraenzle (York University) “Transnationalizing Memories of the German Past: Barbara Yelin’s Irmina and Birgit Weyhe’s Madgermanes”

Júlia Garraio (Universidade de Coimbra) “The Unexplored Family Album: Portuguese Comics and Post-Memories of the Colonial War”

Coffee break

15:30 – 16:30 Memory as Resistance

Anna Nordenstam (University of Gothenburg) & Margareta Wallin Wictorin (Karlstad University) “We remember Women’s Lib Comics. Swedish Feminist Comics from the 1980’s”

Nina Mickwitz (University of the Arts London) “Beyond Nostalgia: Memories to Fuel Resistance and Re-Imagine Possibilities”

16:30 – 17:00 Wrapping-up and final comments