Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics Call for Papers: Special Issue on Indian Graphic Narratives @JGNandComics

The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics has published a Call for Papers for a special issue on Indian graphic narratives. Here's the description of the Call.

The post-millennial years have witnessed significant developments in the field of popular visuality in South Asia and for India at least, a liberalised economy, advancements in digital technology, satellite television, urban beautification projects and a publishing boom have all shaped what we see, how we see it and why we see it. Within this post-millennial, economic, socio-cultural context Indian graphic narratives have prospered. Now, nearly twenty years into a sustained period of their production, there is a need to take stock of the field in order to bring together the various facets of scholarship that continue to emerge about this body of cultural production. Although the early years of the 2000s saw steady production and (in particular, domestic) circulation of Indian graphic narratives, research and scholarship has taken a little time to gain similar momentum but as the canon of creative work has grown, scholarship, particularly in the last seven to ten years has proved to be more sustained and wider in its scope of enquiry. The field now has some key academic texts with many chapters and academic papers supporting this field of interest and research. The aim of this Special Issue is to publish a selection of academic papers that reflect on and take stock of the field, exploring and presenting key themes, tropes and directions that the Indian graphic narratives scene has pursued collectively over the last 15-20 years. We are interested in examining the last twenty years of Indian graphic narratives production through the following (and related) topics with the over-arching theme of ‘reflection’ and ‘taking stock’: The post-millennial Indian publishing scene and Indian graphic narratives (global corporates, domestic, independent presses and story houses) Theoretical approaches to post-millennial Indian graphic narratives Graphic narratives of the early post-millennial years - Sarnath Banerjee, Orijit Sen, Vishwajyoti Ghosh as examples Comics collectives in India and co-created/curated anthologies of graphic narrative work The works of Appupen The works of Amruta Patil Biography-based graphic narratives Graphic non-fiction (such as the First Hand volumes of work)

More at this link.

Agatha Christie's "The Murder of Roger Ackroyd" In Graphic Form @ComicsGrid @nytimesbooks @

Via @ComicsGrid

From the New York Times: Agatha Christie's classic The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, distilled into a pithy graphic format (by LeUyen Pham) (I do love pith).

Flat-Out Fascinating

From Nick Sousanis, something special. Dr. Sousanis (Columbia, Ed.D. 2014)  has transformed his one-of-a-kind dissertation into a monograph examining comics and graphics in culture.

Description from HUP's website.

The primacy of words over images has deep roots in Western culture. But what if the two are inextricably linked, equal partners in meaning-making? Written and drawn entirely as comics, Unflattening is an experiment in visual thinking. Nick Sousanis defies conventional forms of scholarly discourse to offer readers both a stunning work of graphic art and a serious inquiry into the ways humans construct knowledge.
Unflattening is an insurrection against the fixed viewpoint. Weaving together diverse ways of seeing drawn from science, philosophy, art, literature, and mythology, it uses the collage-like capacity of comics to show that perception is always an active process of incorporating and reevaluating different vantage points. While its vibrant, constantly morphing images occasionally serve as illustrations of text, they more often connect in nonlinear fashion to other visual references throughout the book. They become allusions, allegories, and motifs, pitting realism against abstraction and making us aware that more meets the eye than is presented on the page.
In its graphic innovations and restless shape-shifting, Unflattening is meant to counteract the type of narrow, rigid thinking that Sousanis calls “flatness.” Just as the two-dimensional inhabitants of Edwin A. Abbott’s novella Flatland could not fathom the concept of “upwards,” Sousanis says, we are often unable to see past the boundaries of our current frame of mind. Fusing words and images to produce new forms of knowledge, Unflattening teaches us how to access modes of understanding beyond what we normally apprehend.

More here.

Dr. Sousanis is currently a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of English, University of Calgary.