ICAF 2009 Conference Schedule


Presented by the ICAF Executive Committee and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
October 15-17, 2009

SCHEDULE
Thursday, October 15, SAIC Ballroom

9:00 - 10:30am: Panel 1: Comics and Region
Moderated by Jeffrey Miller
  • Qiana Whitted (University of South Carolina), Of Slaves and Other Swamp Things: Southern History as Comic Book Horror
  • Brian Cremins (Harper College, IL), “Automatic Writing for the Common Man”: Walt Kelly’s Vision of the South in Pogo
  • William Orchard (University of Chicago), The Other Abandonment: Race and Repetition in Chris Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth [cancelled]

10:45 – 12:15pm: Panel 2: Questions of Identity
Moderated by Stanford Carpenter
  • Héctor Fernandez l’Hoeste (Georgia State University), Edgar Clément's “The Sword of God”: On The Practice of Hybridization in Mexican Comics
  • Kom Kunyosying (University of Oregon), The Interrelation of Ethnicity and Form in Gene Yang’sAmerican Born Chinese
  • Matthew Costello (Saint Xavier University, Chicago), Howard Chaykin’s Fifties: Historical Memory and the Creation of a Usable Past in American Century

1:30 – 2:00: Presentation of the annual John A. Lent Scholarship in Comics Studies
Lent Scholarship Lecture by Marco Pellitteri (Italy):
Comics Reading and Attitudes of Openness toward the Other: The Italian-Speaking Teenagers’ Case in South Tyrol
  • Abstract: Narratives based on fictitious characters in literature, cinema, comics, and animation invite adolescents to rehearse and elaborate on their contents. Circles of readers or watchers can thus redraw their value schemes and patterns of behavior within their peer groups. These dynamics are especially interesting if the social setting in which the adolescents live is filled with tensions due to matters of linguistic and cultural cohabitation, and if social interactions are shaped by such issues as prejudice, the formation or maintenance of cultural stereotypes, and ethnocentrism. I will synthetically present the main results of my research on this issue, specifically my study of the relations between the aforementioned factors and cultural consumption, with detailed looks at adolescents' readings of comics. My research is set in South-Tyrol (Italy), on adolescents of the Italian linguistic group. The methods used are survey, focus group, and, as side materials, informal conversations with some school teachers. Marco Pellitteri, sociologist, has published scholarly work in Italy, France, the USA, South Korea, and Japan. Author of five books, he is also the scientific director of the International Cartoonists' Exhibition of Rapallo (Genoa).

2:15 – 3:30: Artist Presentation: Guy Davis

3:45 – 5:15: Panel 3: Ethics and Comics
Moderated by Jeffrey Miller
  • Øyvind Vågnes (University of Bergen, Norway), The Unmaking of the World: Joe Sacco’s Palestine#4 and “Trauma on Loan”
  • Bruce Dadey (Laurentian University, Ontario), Drawing the Suffering of Others: Joe Sacco and the Ethics of Graphic Representation
  • Candida Rifkind (University of Winnipeg), A Stranger in a Strange Land? Guy Delisle Redraws the Travelogue

6:30 – 8:30: ICAF 2009 and the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago present: AN EVENING WITH MAX & PERE JOAN @ The Instituto Cervantes of Chicago

Friday, October 16, SAIC Ballroom
9:30 – 11:00am: Panel 4: Aesthetics and Autobiography
Moderated by Ana Merino
  • Toph Marshall (University of British Columbia, Vancouver), Presocratic Philosophy and Hornschemeier’s The Three Paradoxes
  • Adrielle Mitchell (Nazareth College, NY), Picturing National Identity: Iconic Solidarity in Autobiographical Comics
  • Tracy Canfield, Body Image and the Image of the Body: Carol Lay’s The Big Skinny

11:15– 12:15pm: Panel 5: Disciplinary Discourse
Moderated by Charles Hatfield
  • Phillip Troutman (George Washington University, DC), The Proto-Disciplinary Discourse of Comics Scholarship: A Rhetorical Analysis of Academic Journal Article Introductions
  • Bill Kartalopoulos (New School, New York City), Taking and Making Liberties: Narratives of Comics History

1:30–2:30: Artist Presentation: John Miers

2:45–4:15: Panel 6: The Problematics of Aesthetic Evaluation in Comics
Moderated by Charles Hatfield
  • Don Ault (University of Florida, Gainesville), Incommensurable Interconnectivity: The Paradigmatic Eccentricity of Lee Sherman’s "Bad" Comics
  • Rusty Witek (Stetson University, FL), Good Comics, Bad Comics, Unknowable Comics: Hyper-Competence and Its Opposite
  • Tof Eklund (University of Florida, Gainesville), Art as Comics, Doubt as Virtue: Toward an Ethicoaesthetics of Comics

4:30–5:15: Panel 7: Comics and Sociopolitical Context
Moderated by José Alaniz
Masashi Ichiki (Chikushi Jogakuen University, Japan), Embracing the Victimhood: Representation of A-bomb Victims in Japanese Shojo Manga

4:30–6:30: Guy Davis signs @ our sponsor Graham Cracker Comics, just steps away from ICAF!

Saturday, October 17, Gene Siskel Film Center

9:00 - 10:00: Panel 8: Innovative Form I
Moderated by Cécile Danehy
  • Sylvain Rheault (University of Regina, SK, Canada), Curvy Alterations in Gaston by Franquin
  • Maud Hagelstein (Université de Liège, Belgium), How to capture life as it happens? An Aesthetical Approach to Joan Sfar’s Drawing

10:15 – 11:45: Panel 9: Innovative Form II
Moderated by José Alaniz
  • Jörn Ahrens (University of Giessen, Germany), The Father’s Art of Crime: Igort’s 5 Is the Perfect Number
  • Andrei Molotiu (Indiana University), Sequential Dynamism
  • Ryan Holmberg (University of Southern California), A New Vision for Ole New Vision: Modernism in Yokoyama Yuichi's Manga

1:00 – 2:15: Artist Presentation: Sara Varon