ICAF 2020 Virtual Conference Program  

The ICAF 2020 Virtual Conference Committee Has Dedicated All Programming to the Memory of Former ICAF
​Ex-Com Chair Dr. Cécile Danehy. Tributes to Dr. Danehy Can Be Found Here.
October 22, 2020
Blog Post: Jeremy Stoll -- "Re-Worlding Comics: A Call for Reflexive Scholars" 

October 29, 2020
Blog Post: Ayanni C.H. Cooper -- "'Look Out World – We’re Comin’!': Queer Utopia in Mildred Louis’ Agents of the Realm"

Comics Publishing Roundtable
  • ​Kendra Boileau, Publisher of Graphic Mundi and the Assistant Director and Editor-in-Chief of Penn State University Press
  • Gina Gagliano, Publishing Director of Random House Graphic
  • John Jennings,Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside
November 5, 2020
Blog Post: Carolyn Cocca -- ​“The Peace We Find in Battle”: Gender and Violence in Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel Comics

Roundtable: From Gender and Violence to Cyborgs and Selfhood: Feminist Discourses in Female-led Superhero Comics
  • Susan Kirtley, "Girl in the Middle: Cyborgs, Selfhood, and Ms. Marvel"
  • Carolyn Cocca, “The Peace We Find in Battle”: Gender and Violence in Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel Comics
  • Samantha Langsdale, “Physical Feminism” in Female-Led Superhero Comics: Analyzing Violence, Gender, and Race
November 12, 2020
Blog Post: Maite Urcaregui -- Political Geographies of Race in James Baldwin and Yoran Cazac’s Little Man, Little Man
November 19, 2020
Blog Post: Adrienne Resha -- Thoth, Justice, and the American Way: Egyptian Myth, Modern Egypt, and Superhero Comics
November 25, 2020
Blog Post: remus jackson and F. Stewart-Taylor -- Reading Trans Autobiographical Comics through Trans Phenomenology ​
December 3, 2020
Blog Post: Brianna Anderson -- "A 'Gentle Fantasy' of Ocean Conservation: Environmental Justice in Aquicorn Cove"

Roundtable: Representation, Repatriation, and Renovation
  • Tania Perez Cano, "New Weapons for a Greek Goddess: Athena, the first Cuban Webcomic in English"
  • Adrienne Resha, "Thoth, Justice, and the American Way: Egyptian Myth, Modern Egypt, and Superhero Comics"
  • Maite Urcaregui, “Political Geographies of Race in James Baldwin and Yoran Cazac’s Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood”
December 10, 2020
Blog Post: Andrea Aramburú Villavisencio -- "Walking-With Un día: Ana Paula Machuca’s Love Letter to Trujillo, Peru" 
December 17, 2020
Blog Post: José Alaniz -- "Genocide, Armenian Comics and Mangasaryan’s Prior to the Auction of Souls"
January 7, 2021
Blog Post: Elk Paauw -- "4dtime.space" 
​
Roundtable: New Perspectives on Reading Comics
  • Elk Paauw, "4dtime.space"
  • Jakub Jankowski, "What For Do We Need «Reading Patterns» When Reading Comic Books?"
  • Deborah Shamoon, "Boxes and Balloons: On First and Third Person Narration in Manga and Comics"
January 14, 2020
Blog Post: Camila Gutierrez -- "Ruptured Graphic Narrative as a Tool for Intersectional Knowledge: Chicana and Japanese Iconographies in “Flies on the Ceiling” and Skim"
January 21, 2020
Blog Post: Keith Friedlander -- "The Role of Communal Studios in Combating Precarious Labor"
February 4, 2021
Blog Post: Irenae Aigbedion -- "Divining Epistemologies in Informe Tunguska (2009)"
​
Roundtable: Comics Trauma: Representing Violence and Genocide 
  • Morgan Podraza, "Comics as Archive: Documentation in Una’s Becoming Unbecoming"
  • José Alaniz, "Tigran Mangasarian and the Armenian Genocide in Armenian Comics"
February 11, 2021
Blog Post: Jakub Jankowski -- "Why Do We Need «Reading Patterns» When Reading Comic Books?"
February 18, 2021
Blog Post: Johnathan Flowers -- "Motoori Norinaga’s 'Mono no Aware' and Comics as Self-Cultivation"  
February 25, 2021
Blog Post: Evan Ash-- "'A Powerful Forum': The National Social Welfare Assembly Comics Project" 
March 4, 2021
Roundtable: Graphic Activism: The Extraordinary, the Ordinary, and the Precarious
  • Brianna Anderson, "A 'Gentle Fantasy' of Ocean Conservation: Environmental Justice in Aquicorn Cove"
  • Keith Friedlander, "The Role of Communal Studios in Combatting Precarious Labour"
  • Ben Machlin, "Celebrating the Ordinary in Chris Ware’s Rusty Brown"
April 1, 2021
Roundtable: Critical Interventions in Comics Studies
  • Jeremy Stoll, "Re-Worlding Comics: An Argument for Scholarly Ethics"
  • Johnathan Flowers, "Comics as Self-Cultivation: What Comics Studies Can Learn from Motoori Norinaga"
  • Kenneth Oravetz, "Critical Bibliographic and Artist’s Book Approaches to Understanding Comics Materiality"
  • Kalervo A. Sinervo, "Digital Materiality in Comics: Questions of Colour"
Special thanks to ICAF Executive Committee Members Frank Bramlett, Biz Nijdam, and Osvaldo Oyola for their work on our first virtual conference!