[ecrea] CFP Comics of Joe Sacco

Call for Papers

The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World

The Comics of Joe Sacco: Journalism in a Visual World is a proposed 
volume in a new book series, Critical Approaches to Comics Artists, at 
the University Press of Mississippi. This volume will contain an array 
of critical essays on the comics of Joe Sacco, best known for his comics 
journalism in works such as Palestine and Safe Area Gorazde. Essays from 
many disciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives are welcome, 
including critical approaches from comics studies, art history, cultural 
studies, literary studies, history, political science, communications 
and journalism, international relations, and peace and conflict studies.

Essays that address the following questions are especially welcome:

How does Sacco's work negotiate and synthesize journalistic, 
documentary, and graphic narrative form?

How can Sacco's work be read in relation to underground comix, the New 
Journalism, documentary film, and/or investigative reporting?

How do Sacco's works negotiate and represent journalistic ethics, 
questions of veracity, war crimes, and human rights violations?

What is Sacco's relationship to the tradition of investigative 
reporting, "submersion" or "immersion" journalism, social realism, 
and/or autobiographical comics?

In what ways can Sacco's works be read as a response to the contemporary 
"crisis" in the print news media?

What kinds of history does Sacco privilege, and how do his works engage 
with international relations?

How do Sacco's works present history and make complex histories present?

How does Sacco's developing career and work, from his early satirical 
comics and music journalism to his more recent reportage about war and 
poverty, reflect the increasing legitimacy of comics in art and literary 
cultures? Or, alternately, how is Sacco's work misrecognized as comics 
rather than journalism?

Please send a 500-1000 word abstract, CV, and contact information to 
Daniel Worden at (dworden /at/ unm.edu) <mailto:(dworden /at/ unm.edu)> by March 25.

Accepted abstracts will be used in a formal book prospectus, and the 
deadline for full-length essays will be negotiated shortly thereafter.