Comics triple header to start off the K3 seminar serie on September 12!

The K3 fall seminar series will start on September 12, and there will be three talks on comics.

At 10.15-12.00, Jakob Dittmar, Senior Lecturer and Docent in Media and Communication Studies, K3, will talk about Narrative Strategies – African Types and Stereotypes in Comics.

At 13.15-15.00 Jacob Habinc, Master’s Graduate, Lund University, and Magnus Nilsson, Professor of Comparative Literature, K3 will give a joint seminar on Klass och arbete i samtida svenska serier.

Below is an abstract for Jakob Dittmar’s talk.

The use of types and stereotypes of Africans in comics is looked into. Focus is put on some distinct strategies of representing and negotiating race in comics, most notably one example by Birgit Weyhe and several by Anton Kannemeyer a.k.a. Joe Dog because of their exceptional high quality of reflected experimentation. Keep in mind that there is a close relation between the genre of a comic and its visual style: a distorted, caricatural representation is expected in humoristic comics. This is different from the notion of prototypical figures and behaviours argued for from a narratological perspective, where specific figures have to act according to their own and the stories’ established formal demands. To be able to discuss types and stereotypes in comics, some backgrounds and contexts need to be introduced. Some brief reminders about comics storytelling and character design are given before looking into several distinct ways of depicting Africans in recent comics. The discussion of figures and their uses in comics narratives is centring on the way in which comics place information on various visual layers that combine to become their narratives.

Jacob Habinc’ talk will focus on his Master’s thesis Arbetartecknaren: Svenska serieromaner som arbetarlitteratur. You can download it here: http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=8953144&fileOId=8953145

Magnus Nilsson will discuss his article Working-class comics? Proletarian self-reflexiveness in Mats Källblad’s graphic novel ”Hundra år i samma klass”, to be published in Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. You can download it here: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21504857.2018.1500383

The morning seminar will be in English, the afternoon one in Swedish. Both will take place in the K3 Studio.

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