Speculative Conversation: Comics and Interdisciplinary Arts and Humanities Research
- Date
- Wednesday 9 November 2022, 13:00-14:30
- Location
- University of Leeds Main Campus
- Category
- LAHRI Research Development event
This workshop, hosted by Miriam Kent (School of Media and Communication) and Eirini Boukla (School of Design), aims to bring together researchers from a range of disciplinary backgrounds who use comics and cartoons as part of their research.
Despite forming crucial aspects of cultural and national identity and informing various transmedia texts through adaptation, the multimodal artform of comics remains on the margins of scholarly inquiry, especially in the UK.
Using the collaborative nature of comic/cartoon processes, we intend to create a platform that can imaginatively bring together research that does not always share similar language or methods. This event will connect colleagues who utilise comics in/as their research from across the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (and beyond) to discern the interdisciplinary significance of these critically undervalued media phenomena and how they can aid in both the research process and communication of findings.
The event will be an initial venue in which scholars will reflect on the artistic, cultural, social, and economic importance of comics and graphic narratives.
Questions posed during the discussion would include: What is comics research? What happens when the comic form is integrated into the research process itself? How are comic aesthetics involved in research? What might comics offer academic researchers in both methodological and analytical terms? Wow do comics function for presenting research? These reflections could lead to a research agenda for future collaborations beyond the University (e.g. Sadler Seminar series; international symposium; research network).