Comics and Visual Culture 2018

Comics and Visual Culture 2018, a symposium, will take place at California State University, Northridge on Saturday, March 10, at the University Student Union. Put on by the Comics@CSUN group, this free, public event highlights student research into comic art, visual media, and popular culture. It is a sequel to a symposium of the same name in 2016. Comics and Visual Culture 2018 will feature student presenters drawn from CSUN and three other CSUs, Cal Poly, CSU Fullerton, and San Francisco State, as well as Colorado College, Williams College (Massachusetts), and Portland State (Oregon). These speakers will share research on topics ranging from Batman, Star Wars, and Japanese manga, to depictions of gender and disability, to memory, to the politics of comics about Iran and Puerto Rico, and more. The symposium will begin with a keynote by Damian Duffy (U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and John Jennings (UC Riverside), co-creators of the recent bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (2017), based upon Octavia Butler’s classic science fiction novel. Activities will also include a keynote by Susan Kirtley, Director of Composition and of Comics Studies at Portland State University and author of Lynda Barry: Girlhood through the Looking Glass (2012). CTVA Professor Frances Gateward and English Professor Charles Hatfield are co-organizing Comics and Visual Culture on behalf of the interdisciplinary Comics@CSUN group. The symposium, Hatfield says, “signals CSUN’s commitment to Comics Studies. This is an area that many of our students care about, at the crossroads of so many disciplines and topics: art, media, cinema, literature, and more. We’re proud to host so many student researchers in this field.” Comics and Visual Culture 2018 is sponsored by CSUN’s Instructionally Related Activities Fund and Distinguished Visiting Speakers Program; the University Student Union; the CSUN Departments of Cinema and Television Arts and of English; the English Department Alumni Association; the CSUN College of Humanities; and Comics@CSUN.