Latest News

CSUN Professor Speaks on Comic Art in Museums

charles.hatfield@csun.edu — Mon, 06 Mar 2023 00:33:09 +0000

March 5, 2023

On Monday, March 6, 2023, in celebration of Will Eisner Week, CSUN Professor Charles Hatfield, curator of the Comic Book Apocalypse exhibition 91��ý, will be speaking at ArtCenter College of Design as a guest of historian, designer, teacher, and comics critic Michael Dooley. They will discuss the upsurge in comic art exhibitions in museums and galleries as well as their shared experience as past judges for the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. This event is free and open to the public!

JS 333: Jewish Graphic Novels in Spring 2023

charles.hatfield@csun.edu — Wed, 09 Nov 2022 00:35:17 +0000

November 8, 2022

Dr. Melissa Weininger, recent Jewish Studies hire, offers an innovative course on Jewish comics and culture

Dr. Melissa Weininger, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies, has been developing new curriculum since she came to CSUN in 2021. Next spring, she will be teaching two new courses relevant to the study of popular culture, JS 220: Jews on Film and JS 333: Jewish Graphic Novels. JS 333 is the second permanent course in the CSUN Catalog devoted to comics studies! Dr. Weininger describes the course as follows:

The connection between image and text is foundational to Jewish practice and thought. Even now, the central text of Judaism, the Torah, is inscribed by hand, the appearance and design of the letters dictated by tradition. This course will examine contemporary works that combine image and text to depict Jewish history, culture, community, and identity in the form of the graphic novel. We will trace the development of comic art and the graphic novel and explore its Jewish roots, explore the ways in which Jewish writers have employed and adapted the form to represent Jewish identity and historical experience, and consider the ways that this hybrid form is suited to a tradition of Jewish narrative and literature. We will learn a scholarly vocabulary for analyzing graphic novels on diverse topics including immigration, Israel, the Holocaust, gender and sexuality, and American Jewish life and culture.

JS 333 is open to all undergraduate students who have completed the lower-division writing requirement, and is available for General Education in C2 (Humanities). The class will be offered in person on Monday/Wednesday at 11:00 a.m. and will be capped at about 41 students.

Dr. Melissa Weininger

Comics@CSUN organizes "March" teach-in

charles.hatfield@csun.edu — Tue, 10 Nov 2020 00:24:00 +0000

November 9, 2020

Comics@CSUN sponsors a discussion of comics, the Civil Rights movement, and antiracist activism.

March: A Virtual Teach-In

On Thursday, November 19, 2020, at 9:30-10:45 am, Comics@CSUN is offering a free Zoom webinar about John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell’s March trilogy, one of the most acclaimed comics of the past decade, and a timely reminder of the ongoing struggle for civil rights, including voting rights. Click here to register!

March is the graphic memoir of revered Congressman and activist John Lewis, as well as a history of the Civil Rights movement from about the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. This stirring, profound, and timely trilogy is being taught by many CSUN teachers this term. Several are getting together, along with guest scholars Jorge Santos and Qiana Whitted, to share thoughts about reading, learning from, and teaching this work, and to talk with students and other readers about what the work may mean today, at this fraught moment of American political and social transition.

Registrants will have the opportunity to submit questions for Q&A beforehand. Video of the event will hopefully be provided afterward, for independent viewing.

Please help Comics@CSUN spread the word about this special event! Feel free to send questions to organizer charles.hatfield@csun.edu [.]

Below is a flyer for the event:

Comics and Visual Culture 2018 (you can read the conference program here)

charles.hatfield@csun.edu — Thu, 08 Mar 2018 01:05:35 +0000

March 7, 2018

Below is the complete schedule for the Comics and Visual Culture 2018 symposium, the second in Comics@CSUN's biennial series. Join us as we celebrate student research and observe Will Eisner Week!

Comics and Visual Culture 2018

Saturday, March 10, 9am-6pm

California State University, Northridge

University Student Union, East Conference Center

In honor of Will Eisner Week, graphic novels, comics and comics literacy, and free speech!

8:30	Meet, Greet and Sign-In
9:00	Welcome and Opening Remarks (Lake View Terrace) Frances Gateward and Charles Hatfield, CSU Northridge
9:15-10:15	CREATORS’ KEYNOTE (Lake View Terrace) J2D2 Arts, Black Comix, and Adapting a Classic J2D2 Arts is the team of John Jennings (UC Riverside) and Damian Duffy (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), co-creators of Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (2017), co-editors of Black Comix Returns (2018), and creators, editors, or curators of numerous other projects.
10:30-12:00	Panel A: Drawing Gender (Altadena) Moderator: Nicole Eschen Solis, CSU Northridge “The Representation of Women in Comics,” Hannah Farley (Cal Poly) “The Dichotomy of Sexism and Feminism in Heavy Metal Magazine,” Gage Greenspan (Cal Poly) “Women’s Disabled Bodies in Comic Books: Reclaiming Agency by Drawing Herself,” Jessica Penzner (CSU Northridge) Panel B: Aesthetics, Philosophy, Memory (Tujunga) Moderator: Colleen Tripp, CSU Northridge “Shine the Way,” Bersain Gutierrez (San Francisco State) “Science Fiction: Aesthetics and Philosophy,” Liam Espinoza (CSU Northridge) “Never Real Historians, Always Near Poets: Memory and the Dimensions of Architecture of the Graphic Novel,” Nicole Vandever (CSU Fullerton)
12:00	Lunch
1:00-2:00	SCHOLAR’S KEYNOTE (Lake View Terrace) Crossing the Line(s): An Interdisciplinary Approach to Comics Studies Susan Kirtley, Director of Composition and of Comics Studies at Portland State University, is the author of Lynda Barry: Girlhood through the Looking Glass (2012). She is currently writing a book on comic strips by women viewed from a rhetorical perspective.
2:15-3:45	Panel C: *Disability and Dismodernism* (Altadena) Moderator: José Alaniz, U of Washington, Seattle “Looking for Accurate Representations of Disability in Alderaan Places: The Use of Darth Maul as the Other to Overthrow the Discourse of Disability,” Montana Clark (CSU Northridge) “Identity and Disability: Darth Vader as a Dismodernist Villain in Marvel’s Darth Vader,” Ashley Aminian (CSU Northridge) “Poverty and Defective Bodies: Grimjack as a Dismodernist Text,” Arthur M. Maturo (CSU Northridge) Panel D: Social and Cultural Politics (Tujunga) Moderator: J.C. Lee, CSU Northridge “Cross-Dressing Female Protagonists, Description in Shōjo Manga, and Japanese Society,” Maki Takase (Portland State U) “The Incitement to Discourse: Cultural Generalizations of Iran from the Literary Analysis of Persepolis,” Veronica Campos (Colorado College) “Up, Up, and A-Wepa: Puerto Rican Cultural Politics in La Borinqueña,” Katrina Martinez (Williams College)
4:00-5:30	Panel E: Nation and Ideology (Altadena) Moderator: Kinitra Brooks, U of Texas at San Antonio “Trumpism and the Wall,” Billy Gardner (Cal Poly) “‘Captain America Must Die:’ How a Supersoldier Became a Patriot,” Mackenna Johnson (Cal Poly) “Holy Morality, Batman!”, Joseph Jaffray (CSU Northridge) Panel F: Rethinking Comics: Form and History (Tujunga) Moderator: Krystal Howard, CSU Northridge “Queering Comic Historicity,” Blaine Malcolm (Cal Poly) “The Role of Synthesis in Rodolphe Töpffer’s Humor,” Nick Wirtz (Portland State U)
5:45	Closing Remarks (Lake View Terrace)

Join us for Comics and Visual Culture 2018, in honor of Will Eisner Week!

charles.hatfield@csun.edu — Wed, 07 Feb 2018 21:25:28 +0000

February 7, 2018

 (Detail from CVC 2018 poster, designed by John Jennings)

Comics and Visual Culture 2018, a symposium showcasing students' research into comic art and popular culture, will take place at California State University, Northridge on Saturday, March 10, at the University Student Union's East Conference Center. Put on by the interdepartmental Comics@CSUN group, this is the second Comics and Visual Culture symposium in what has become a biennial series, launched in 2016. CVC 2018 is a free, public event, running all day from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. All members of the CSUN community, as well as fans and students of comics from greater Los Angeles and beyond, are encouraged to attend. No preregistration or RSVP is required.

With this special event, CSUN honors Will Eisner Week, an annual international celebration promoting comics, graphic novel literacy, and free speech, inspired by Eisner's pioneering work in comic books, graphic novels, educational media, and comics teaching. For more on Will Eisner and his legacy, see here.

The Comics and Visual Culture symposium will feature student presenters drawn from CSU Northridge 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 Dr. Damian Duffy (U. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign) and John Jennings, MFA (UC Riverside), co-creators of the recent bestseller Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (2017), based upon Octavia Butler’s classic science fiction novel. Proceedings will also include a keynote by Dr. 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, both award-winning comics scholars, are co-organizing the CVC symposium on behalf of the 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.” CVC arose from a yearlong series of Comics Studies events on campus in 2015-2016, timed to Comic Book Apocalypse, a CSUN Art Galleries exhibition curated by Hatfield focusing on the work of artist Jack Kirby. "We've been building up Comics Studies 91��ý ever since," notes Hatfield, "and this symposium is a key part of that." The event also ties into the launch of the English Department's new Minor in Popular Culture, which will begin admitting students in Fall 2018.

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.

For further information about Comics and Visual Culture 2018, or to arrange for classes to attend the symposium, please contact Charles Hatfield at .

Comics and Visual Culture Conference Returns in 2018

charles.hatfield@csun.edu — Fri, 22 Sep 2017 19:33:56 +0000

September 22, 2017

Sequel to popular student-centered conference set for March 2018 at the University Student Union

CALL FOR PAPERS

Comics and Visual Culture 2018: A Conference for Student Research

Saturday, March 10, 2018, CSUN University Student Union

Submission deadline extended to January 12, 2018!

Building on the success of its 2016 symposium, the Comics@CSUN group is once again hosting a conference devoted to student research in Comics Studies and allied fields.

The explosion of interest in the academic study of sequential art – including comic books, graphic novels, manga, webcomics, and related forms – matches the exponential growth in the availability and influence of the medium. Alternative comics and zines, literary comics, and webcomics have expanded the audience for comic art, even as Japanese manga has become a truly global phenomenon. At the same time, the traditional commercial mainstream of US comic books has been rocked by debates over social change and the need for greater diversity. Both in print and via myriad adaptions in film, television, video games, and other media, comics have once again become an everyday cultural phenomenon. The genre of “the comic book movie,” especially via the Walt Disney Company and its ownership of Marvel and Time Warner and its ownership of DC, now dramatically shapes the feature film industry; in fact, the synergy among film, TV, the internet, graphic novels, and comic books is virtually complete. In this light, our conference seeks papers that attempt to understand comics, and the interaction of comics and visual culture generally, from diverse perspectives.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Close readings of individual works, including comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, manga, anime, and film or television programs
The aesthetics and craft of comic art
The cultural impact of comics and graphic novels
Fandom
Comic books, children, and education
Film, game, and other media adaptations of comic strips, comic books, graphic novels, or manga
Industry studies, including studies of individual companies
The history of sequential art forms
Studies of particular artists/authors/creators

Send completed papers (about 7-8 double-spaced pages) by January 12, 2018, to Prof. Frances Gateward, CSU Northridge, via email: fgcomicsatcsun@gmail.com

Include institutional affiliation, academic standing, and postal address.

Artist Edie Fake Returns to CSUN

charles.hatfield@csun.edu — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 00:34:56 +0000

November 28, 2016

Tuesday, Dec. 6th, 2016: Join Comics@CSUN for a special talk with this one-of-a-kind artist!

Comics@CSUN launches a new series of online essays

charles.hatfield@csun.edu — Tue, 27 Sep 2016 21:17:28 +0000

September 27, 2016

Ways of Reading Comics demonstrates strategies for the critical reading of comics

Comics@CSUN co-founder Charles Hatfield, Professor of English, has just launched Ways of Reading Comics, an occasional series of online essays here at the Comics@CSUN website. The aim of this series is to share with a wider public some of the kinds of work done in English 333 (Comics and Graphic Novels), the popular GE course Prof. Hatfield founded in 2005. The first entry in the series offers a formal reading of a single page from the current Marvel comic Black Widow, plus a coda reflecting on the gender ideology implicit in the popular Black Widow character.

CSUN Professor Wins Eisner Award for Comics Scholarship!

charles.hatfield@csun.edu — Tue, 26 Jul 2016 21:53:10 +0000

July 26, 2016

CSU Northridge Professor of Cinema and Television Arts Frances Gateward and her collaborator John Jennings (University at Buffalo, SUNY) have won the 2016 Will Eisner Award for Best Academic/Scholarly Work for their co-edited essay collection, The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art (Rutgers UP, 2015).

The prize was announced on Friday, July 22, 2016, at the annual awarding of the Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards at Comic-Con International in San Diego. The Eisners, named for pioneering comics artist, graphic novelist, and educator Will Eisner, are considered the comics field's highest prize in the U.S.

The Blacker the Ink gathers contributions by eighteen scholars representing a wide range of disciplines, including African American Studies; Cinema and Media Studies; Communications; Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies; English; Art and Visual Studies; and Teacher Education. In its interdisciplinary scope, the book represents the diverse nature of Comics Studies today. Its essays cover the political challenges posed by Black comics, the historical contexts in which Black comics creators have worked, the rhetorical and political challenges posed by Black superheroes, and representations of Blackness in the current graphic novel era. From notorious comic books of the 1950s, to contemporary graphic novels depicting African and African American cultures, to works by creators such as Jackie Ormes, Aaron McGruder, Dwayne McDuffie, and Kyle Baker, The Blacker the Ink addresses a huge range of works and images at the intersection of comics, popular culture, race, racism, and struggles for social justice. The book has also won the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association's 2016 Award for Best Edited Collection in Popular Culture and American Culture.

The Blacker the Ink is the work of an unusual editorial team. Prof. Gateward, head of the Media Theory & Criticism Option in CTVA, is an expert on international cinema (including Korean, Chinese, and Third World film) and women filmmakers as well as African American film and popular culture; she is the editor of Seoul Searching: Cultural Identity and Cinema in South Korea (2007) and co-editor of Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Masculinity and Youth (2005) and Sugar Spice and Everything Nice: Cinemas of Girlhood (2002). Her co-editor, John Jennings, is a professor of Art, Graphic Design, and Visual Studies, a longtime curator of comics and graphic art, co-author of the art book Black Comix: African American Independent Comics (2010), and an accomplished gallery and comics artist in his own right, currently illustrating the graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s classic novel Kindred. Together Gateward and Jennings have assembled a multifaceted exploration of race in comics that breaks important new ground in the field.

Prof. Gateward joins her Comics@CSUN colleague Charles Hatfield, of the CSUN English Department, who won an Eisner in 2012 for his monograph Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby.

Comics Symposium Schedule Now Available!

charles.hatfield@csun.edu — Thu, 25 Feb 2016 18:49:14 +0000

February 25, 2016

Comics and Visual Culture: A Symposium

Saturday, February 27, 2016, 9am-6pm

California State University, Northridge

University Student Union, East Conference Center

A Comics@CSUN presentation

9:00	Welcome and Opening Remarks (Lake View Terrace Room) Frances Gateward and Charles Hatfield, CSU Northridge
9:15-10:45	Panel One: Dreams, Memories, and Nightmares (Tujunga Room) Moderator: Nicole Eschen-Solis, CSU Northridge “A Dream within a Daydream: Binky Brown, Jimmy Corrigan, and Ace Hole’s treatment of the Comic Daydream,” Lizette Hernandez, CSU Northridge “Looking at Photographs: Memories Open for Interpretation in Maus and Fun Home,” Barbara Guldner, CSU Northridge “Tales of Armageddon: Witnessing and Recounting in Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen,” Tiffany E. Babb, University of Southern California Panel Two: From Margin to Center (Panorama City Room) Moderator: J.C. Lee, CSU Northridge “El Deafo as a Verifiable Superhero in the Autobiography of Cece Bell,” Jenny Blenk, Portland State University “Born Different: X-Men and the Mutant Metaphor,” Sean Aitchison, CSU Northridge “Changing the Perspective on Nanaue!” David Lim, CSU Northridge “Aranas y Escaranajos: Framing Latino Identity within the Contemporary Superhero Genre,” Nora Sepulveda, CSU Northridge
11:00-12:00	Scholar’s Keynote (Lake View Terrace): Intersections: Disability in Comics, East and West Dr. José Alaniz, Program Director, Disability Studies, University of Washington- Seattle; author of Death, Disability, and the Superhero and Komiks: Comic Art in Russia
12:00-1:00	LUNCH
1:00-2:00	Creators’ Keynote (Lake View Terrace): The Future Is Free: Concrete Park Erika Alexander and Tony Puryear, co-authors of the Concrete Park comic book and graphic novel series
2:15-3:45	Panel Three: Our Batman, Ourselves (Tujunga) Moderator: Susan Kirtley, Portland State University “The Golden Age of Batman,” Luis Escobedo, San Diego State University “Procedural Rhetoric and Terministic Screens: A Rhetorical Analysis of Batman: Arkham Knight,” Jordan Puga, CSU Northridge “Dual Identity and Trauma in Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns,” Kim Lewis, CSU Northridge Panel Four: An Art of Details—Comics Form (Panorama City) Moderator: Jo Ann Bischetsrieder, ITT Technical Institute, Sylmar “Hawkeye’s Temporal Mastery through Manipulation and Distortion,” Juvel Mar Ingal, CSU Northridge “The Mire: Simple, but Complicated," J. Olinger, Portland State University “Scrupulosity in Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary,” Judy Stalbaum, CSU Northridge “Windows of Time: A Formalist Examination of Richard McGuire's Here,” Turner Lobey, Portland State University
4:00-5:30	Panel Five: Drawn Through the Ages (Tujunga) Moderator: Rolando Rubalcava, CSU Northridge “How Shintoism and Buddhism Influenced the Creation of the First Japanese Manga and Anime Down Through Modern Times,” Hiroko Miyashita, Empire State College, The State University of New York “More than Night on Pages of Graphic Fiction,” Lita Van Houten, CSU Northridge “How Lust Was Lost: Genre, Identity, and the Neglect of a Pioneering Comics Publication,” Robert B. Hulshof-Schmidt, Portland State University Panel Six: Graphic Women (Panorama City) Moderator: Tina Love, CSU Northridge “The Modern Portrayal of Women in Comics,” Megan Walker, Portland State University “Gender Borders and Performance in Heartbreak Soup," Miguel Aguilar, California State University, Dominguez Hills “What are you looking at? The Revisionist Gaze of Bitch Planet,” Emily Rauber Rodriguez, University of Southern California