“Comics and memory” is an international Nordic networks for comics research (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 three-day conference examines the complex relationships between comics and memory through the prisms of personal, collective, and medial forms as well as practices of remembering.

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