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New publications about the COMICS project activites (11/30/2023)- We are incredibly happy to report two short publications about our project! First, Sylvain Lesage devotes a nice, insightful article (in French) to From Private to Public, Philippe Capart's volume dedicated to exploring and contextualizing the Van Passen collection (link… Read more
The Cambridge Companion to Comics (9/27/2023)- The Cambridge Companion to Comics is out! With original and insightful chapters by Simon Grennan, Paul Williams, Matthieu Letourneux, Jaqueline Berndt, Giorgio Busi Rizzi, Blair Davis, Jan Baetens, Daniel Stein, Nicolas Labarre, Shiamin Kwa, Erwin Dejasse, Benoît Crucifix, Kim… Read more
A new article on the Van Passen collection! (8/30/2023)- Prof. Hugo Frey, affiliated member of the COMICS team, has recently discussed the Van Passen collection in a new entry of Paper Trails, the BOOC (living online book) edited by University College London Press and dedicated to "The Social Life of Archives… Read more
Summer Academy: Making Zines (7/12/2023)- The future is theirs! Ghent University invited its employees to join the Summer Academy project and provide children with an inspiring and socially relevant experience during the summer. Together with passionate colleagues, we introduce third graders to our fields of… Read more
Text in Comics — New Special Issue (6/20/2022)- Benoît Glaude has co-edited, alongside Blanche Delaborde and Pierre-Olivier Douphies, a special issue of the online journal Revue Textimage, a landmark title in the field of word-and-image studies. Titled "Espaces et formes du texte dans la bande dessinée", the issue… Read more
Playing with Formats (1/21/2022)- Two new articles by Dona Pursall and Eva Van de Wiele have been published in the special issue "Jeux de Formats" of the online journal Interfaces: Domesticating and Glocalising the Dreamy: McCay’s Little Nemo and Its Sequels in Early Italian… Read more
Prof. Sergio Brancato’s lecture on comics (11/23/2021)- This is a lecture which was originally intended for the graduate and postgraduate students attending the AIPI Summer School 2021 Ricerca a fumetti. We warmly thank Prof. Sergio Brancato for his enganging talk. Prof. Sergio Brancato (University of Naples, Italy)… Read more
Norbert Moutier’s comics unpacked (11/22/2021)- On November 19, Xavier Girard came to the Faculty library carrying a small bag packed with handmade comics he found on a flea market in his home town of Orléans, France. The comics were drawn, colored, and assembled by a… Read more
SnIF: Italian research group with 2 COMICS members (11/12/2021)- SnIF unites early career researchers interested in studying and investigating Italian comics from an interdisciplinary perspective. Its members are Dr. Dario Boemia (IULM Milano), Dr. Lorenzo Di Paola (Università di Salerno, Universita di Messina), Dr. Nicoletta Mandolini (Universidade do Minho),… Read more
The Jaume Rumeu Collection (11/9/2021)- Dona Pursall has contributed an essay to this recent collection of Jaume Rumeu's work in Misty. A brand new showcase from the Treasury of British Comics brings the stunning work of a Spanish master artist back into print after more than forty… Read more
Unpacking Norbert Moutier’s Juvenilia (10/21/2021)- 19 Nov. 2021, 15:00 — Faculteitsbibliotheek Letteren en Wijsgebeerte, Library Lab Magnel Déballage des bandes dessinées d'enfance de Norbert Moutier Xavier Girard, coordinateur pédagogique à l'ESAD Orléans, a réuni un impressionnant corpus d'archives des bandes dessinées d'enfance de Norbert Moutier.… Read more
Call for Papers — Children’s Drawings in Comics (10/15/2021)- We are launching a call for papers for a special issue of Comicalités, edited by Maaheen Ahmed and Benoît Crucifix, on children's drawings in comics. This special issue examines different ways of looking at and thinking about children's drawings in… Read more
Dibujando historias (10/5/2021)- Dona Pursall and Eva Van de Wiele have each contributed a chapter to the collective volume Dibujando historias. El cómic más allá de la imagen, recently published by the University Press of Zaragoza. Eva writes on metamorphosis in the Spanish… Read more
Time in children’s comics magazines (9/28/2021)- Dona Pursall, Maaheen Ahmed and Eva Van de Wiele join brains and pens in an article for 9de kunst that cuts across British, Italian, French and Belgian comics to inquire into the intertwined notions of childhood and time: about what children… Read more
Summer school workshop for children (8/25/2021)- For the ZomerWijs in de Wijk intiative of the Onderwijscentrum Gent we organized a small workshop comics reading and making for children between 8 and 12. After a short reading of Matthew Forsythe's Pokko heeft een trommel adapted for Kamishibai-format… Read more
Children scribbling comics (8/2/2021)- New article by Benoît Crucifix in the latest issue of Studies in Comics, about two Jojo & Jimmy albums scribbled over by children readers. The article considers material uses and reading practices in Belgian comics culture. As doodles and marks… Read more
Workshops on Italian fumetti at Sint-Lievenscollege Ghent (7/8/2021)- October 2020 PhD student Eva Van de Wiele introduced fifteen-year-old pupils of Sint-Lievenscollege to the wonders of (Italian) comics. Watch this video for a brief recap of the three workshops. This folder gives an overview of the three workshops, the… Read more
Picturing Girlhood: Keynote by Julia Round (7/1/2021)- Julia Round's Keynote explored possession through the prism of complex identities which young teenage girls negotiate. Round argued that possession moves beyond indoctrination and is rather a negotiation of trauma. Through a study of Misty and Spellbound, Round related possession… Read more
Picturing Girlhood · Keynote by Mel Gibson (6/24/2021)- Our digital symposium Sugar and Spice, and the Not So Nice: Comics Picturing Girlhood was launched on 22 April 2021 with a profound and personal keynote by Mel Gibson. Using herself as a case study she reflected on being a… Read more
Loving Comics in Neil the Horse (5/27/2021)- New article by Maaheen Ahmed, in the Comicalités issue "Histoire et influence des pratiques bédéphiliques" edited by Jean-Paul Gabilliet and Nicolas Labarre, about Neil the Horse. Abstract: This article examines the love of comics or bedephilia discernible in Katherine Collins’s Neil… Read more
Reading children in comics (4/30/2021)- New article by Maaheen Ahmed published in the trend-setting journal Children's Geographies, articulating a sociohistorical mapping of children in comics: "This article seeks to map a social history through examining children and ‘childish’ or child-like drawing styles, and hence the… Read more
Кибик °2 — Jommeke in Griekenland (4/30/2021)- Michel De Dobbeleer has a new blog post about Jommeke in Greece, over at the Balkanknipsels blog, reflecting on the reading out loud of comics to children and the educational potential of the comics series to learn about other cultures.… Read more
Interview about Iberian comics (scholars) network (4/18/2021)- Conferences are fertile ground for networking. The European Research Council supports COST actions to promote fruitful, professional bonds and networking. iCOn-MICS is one such action (CA19119). It aims at bringing together all who are involved in comics and graphic novels… Read more
Кибик °1 — Jommeke in Romania (2/10/2021)- Michel De Dobbeleer has a new blog post about Jommeke and Houdini in Romania, over at the Balkanknipsels blog. Questions about what makes a fitting decor for a comics for children, in changing political times, and mixing up various records… Read more
Strong Bonds (12/11/2020)- Click here to download book: ACME_6_Strong Bonds Snoopy and Charlie Brown, Calvin and Hobbes, Tintin and Snowy… comics are home to many memorable child and animal figures. Many cultural productions, especially children’s literature and cartoons, stress the similarities between children and… Read more
Advertising and Children’s Comics (12/11/2020)- The latest issue of H-ermes features an article in Italian by Eva Van de Wiele, "Sedurre a tavola: confini mutati tra pubblicità e fumetti per bambini," about the long history of comics and advertising relationships, as a brief archeology of… Read more
Eco-citizenship within contemporary comics for children (12/7/2020)- New article published by Dona Pursall in the latest issue of Closure, about eco-citizenship in contemporary comics for children, looking at Acquicorn Cove by Katie O’Neill and Hilda and the Black Hound by Luke Pearson. "Drawing from the premise that… Read more
Graphic Attractions in TBO (11/23/2020)- The Spanish comics studies magazine Cuadernos de Comics has published Eva van de Wiele’s detailed study “Las atracciones gráficas de Méndez Álvarez en la phase foraine de TBO (1917-1928)" (English title "Méndez Álvarez’ graphic attractions during TBO’s phase foraine"), which… Read more
Comics and Novelizations for the Youth (10/5/2020)- Benoît Glaude and Laurent Déom have just released a collective volume on novelizations for the youth, looking at various literary adaptations of comics, films, manga, animation, and other media. They look at a specific and vibrant editorial sector, in which… Read more
Children in Graphic Novels (7/15/2020)- Maaheen Ahmed's article "Children in Graphic Novels: Intermedial Encounters and Mnemonic Layers" has been published in the latest issue of the open-access journal Etudes francophones. The article fleshes out the notion of media memory (building on previous work) in connection… Read more
Children’s comics and their readers: opening the doors of a Spanish elementary school (6/6/2023)- Clara Vilaboa on her PhD project Comics have consistently been associated with childhood and the child reader. Over the past decade, children’s comics have started receiving more attention from teachers, literary mediators and researchers (Tarbox, 2020). In the Spanish context, comics… Read more
Two examples of childhood in Swedish comics during the 1970s (12/9/2021)- By Robert Aman (robert.aman@liu.se) Like elsewhere in Western Europe, the effects of 1968 in Sweden cannot be confined to a specific manifestation or mode, but was a total social phenomenon (Wolin 2010). In addition to studies on the birth… Read more
Drawing Back, Revealing and Subverting Belgian Colonial Legacy in Comics (11/4/2021)- 30 Nov. 2021, 9:30-11:00 — Blandijn, first floor, Faculteitszaal Talk by Alicia Lambert, Université catholique de Louvain The last two decades have been marked by a revival of (de)colonial issues in Belgian public, political, and artistic debates, including in… Read more
How to Frame World War II in Comics: Issues of Representation and Formats (11/4/2021)- 17 Nov. 2021, 9:00-12:00 — Blandijn, third floor, Camelot meeting room Talk and discussion by Prof Kees Ribbens (NIOD/Erasmus University Rotterdam) Bio Kees Ribbens is a senior researcher at NIOD, where he has worked since 2006. He is also… Read more
Kids’ comics in the 1970s: Nicole Claveloux’s insufferable characters (3/24/2021)- New outreach article on 9e kunst by Benoît Crucifix about the French illustrator and cartoonist Nicole Claveloux's comics in the children's magazine Okapi in the 1970s. The article considers the interplay between comics and picture books, and the playful self-reflexivity… Read more
Interview with Valentine Gallardo & Mathilde Van Gheluwe (2/16/2021)- As part of the Comics Picturing Gilrhood international symposium, Eva Van de Wiele and Benoît Crucifix interviewed two cartoonists trained in Ghent and based in Belgium, Mathilde Van Gheluwe and Valentine Gallardo (who drew the poster for… Read more
Petit Poilu : les grandes questions ne sont pas réservées aux grands lecteurs (7/13/2020)- We publish here the French version of an article by Benoît Glaude published in Dutch as part of our series "Kinderen en strips cultuur-historisch in kaart gebracht" at 9eKunst Un auteur peut-il s’engager artistiquement et politiquement dans une bande… Read more
Children and Comics: A Cultural Historical Mapping — @9eKunst (7/10/2020)- As part of our public outreach activities, we are publishing a series of articles on the popular comics website 9eKunst, available in Dutch here. We will be making available the original versions of our articles, when written in English or French.… Read more