Comics Studies and Graphic Narrative

Formally established in 2015 but active since the 2004 ICLA Congress in Hong Kong, the ICLA Research Committee on Comics Studies and Graphic Narrative seeks to advance the study of comics and other graphic narrative media in the field of comparative literature and other disciplines. The committee aims to facilitate opportunities for discussion, to present research in joint sessions at the AILC/ICLA congresses and other major meetings, to encourage and enable the publication of the results in journals and anthologies, and to support young and emerging scholars in the field.

Comics studies is an interdisciplinary field that builds on a variety of disciplinary approaches from art history and media studies to semiotics, literary studies, narratology, history and sociology, and thus offers a platform for discussion and interaction across research areas that have traditionally stood apart. Interdisciplinarity is an inbuilt feature in this research field also for the fact that the study of comics must be attentive to the hybrid word-and-image form in which two narrative tracks, the verbal and the visual, interact in this medium.

The present research interest in comics and graphic storytelling is, in part, a reflection of the creativity and innovation in the medium and, in part, a consequence of the serious attention that both fiction and nonfiction comic books and graphic novels have recently received as literature and art or as significant expressions of historical and cultural realities.

In the last decades, having grown from its origins in the margins of literary and art studies, comics’ studies has contributed new perspectives and posed important challenges to the definition of the concept of “literature.” In this respect, comics studies can contribute to the ongoing general discussion around the concept of literature in the field of comparative literature. Furthermore, the close ties that comics studies has had with the culture of fandom gives this research field a unique character as literature and art as well as cultural production and practice.

Members are requested to actively participate in the organisation of our events, such as conferences, panels/seminars, workshops, and other initiatives, such as books and journals.

The ICLA Research Committee on Comics Studies and Graphic Narrative is always happy to welcome new members, especially early career scholars, who wish to join after participating in one of our initiatives. See our next events at https://www.comics-studies.com/events