This year’s annual International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference is being hosted by IADT in the Lexicon Library, Dún Laoghaire from June 29th – July 1st.
The conference will feature a wide range of topics discussed by comics scholars from all over the world – at the Lexicon itself and as part of a parallel online strand – over the three days.
Previous iterations of the International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference have taken place in London, Manchester and Paris, and IADT (with support from the Creative Futures Academy) is honoured to be hosting this year’s event, which will draw scholars from Europe, Asia, the US and elsewhere.
This year’s conference examines how contemporary challenges to conscience, ethics, and responsibility prompt us to think about texts and representations, as well as considering how to approach or rethink debates and conflicts within comics studies itself. 100 speakers over three days will cover comics-related topics as diverse as war, folklore, queer identity, autobiography, trauma, fandom, gender, and creators’ rights- to take just a small sample.
Keynotes confirmed so far include Jeet Heer, José Alaniz and Emil Ferris.
Jeet Heer is is a Canadian author, comics critic, literary critic, and journalist. He is a columnist at The Nation, and is author of In Love with Art: Françoise Mouly’s Adventures in Comics with Art Spiegelman, and is co-editor, with Chris Ware and Chris Oliveros of the Walt and Skeezix series for Fantagraphics.
José Alaniz is Professor in the Departments of Slavic Languages & Literatures and Cinema & Media Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of Komiks: Comic Art in Russia and Death, Disability, and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond. In 2022 he published Resurrection: Comics in Post-Soviet Russia.
Emil Ferris is a writer, cartoonist and designer. Her debut graphic novel, My Favourite Thing is Monsters (2017), won glowing critical praise and multiple awards, including the Eisner Award for best writer/artist.
Michael Connerty, IADT said“The International Graphic Novels and Comics Conference presents an exciting opportunity to engage with the cutting edge of contemporary comics scholarship in what is always a warm and open environment. Given the interdisciplinary nature of so much of the research within the field there should be much of interest to scholars from a very broad range of backgrounds.”
