Cartoon Crossroads Columbus Symposium 2024

In conjunction with the 10th annual Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC) festival, we will be hosting a scholarly symposium dedicated to comics history. As in our past symposia, we invite proposals from all who are working in the field, including university-employed scholars, independent scholars, and cartoonist-scholars.

The symposium will be held on the Ohio State University campus on Thursday September 26th and Friday September 27th.

We are looking for papers that discuss new and innovative work in comics history, papers that raise new questions, correct errors in the received history, find comics history in unlikely archives, tell the history of understudied aspects of the medium, or explore new research methods. In general, we are hoping to pull together a conversation of folks obsessed with the history of the medium—a history with so much yet to be explored—so we can all learn more about the rich history of this medium we love. Since comics is of course a global medium with a complex global history, we welcome talks on the history of comics from anywhere cartoonists have worked. We also welcome talks that seek to push the boundaries of what “counts” as comics, recognizing that many of the formal definitions central to the academic study of comics are historically and culturally contingent. For this reason, we explicitly include cartoons and cartooning in our call, to open the door to the widest possible historical and formal range of topics.

Please send ~250 word abstracts along with a 2-3 page CV or biographical statement to gardner.236@osu.edu by July 15, 2024. The organizing committee will review proposals and distribute acceptances within ten days of the deadline.