[ecrea] Writing Visual Culture: Digital Comics - Call for papers

Writing Visual Culture is the open access, double-blind peer-reviewed 
journal of the University of Hertfordshire's TVAD Research Group. The 
journal's focus is the relationship between text, narrative and image. 
We are currently seeking submissions for a new themed edition examining 
the world of digital comics.



The medium of comics is undergoing a period of transition as the popular 
mode of creation, distribution and consumption shifts from print to 
digital display. This is a transition that has been underway since 
before the general adoption of the World Wide Web and recent advances in 
portable digital display has only served to accelerate the pace of this 
change.



Digital comic pioneers have pushed at the boundaries of the medium and 
explored the possibilities offered by the inherent interactivity of the 
medium and the multimodality of computing devices. Today, smart phones 
and tablet computers provide a single platform of consumption on which 
comics, film, animation, games and other interactive visual media are 
equally at home. Now as comics gradually leave behind the tropes and 
trappings of print and embrace those of the screen, we also see the 
emergence of new hybrid forms that appropriate tropes from other 
screen-based media.



Against this background, papers focused towards the following areas 
would sit well within our themed edition of Writing Visual Culture:



·         New and emergent digital comic forms and technologies.

·         Changes to the underlying structures of the form as a result 
of digital mediation.

·         Crossovers, adaptation and hybridisation between comics and 
videogames.

·         Motion comics and animated adaptations of the form.

·         Acts of reading and the impact of digital mediation.

·         Aesthetic and Literary analysis of digital comic narratives.

·         Digital distribution, changes in the industry and the threat 
of piracy.

·         Webcomics, widening readerships, minority voices and fan cultures.

·         Multimodality and comics relationship with larger transmedia 
narratives.



Although other areas relevant to the study of digital comics will also 
be considered.



Abstracts of 200 words for papers of 3000 to 6000 words should be 
submitted via e-mail to Daniel Merlin Goodbrey at (wvc /at/ e-merl.com) by 
Monday 19th August. Abstracts should specify the research question or 
issue that you are addressing and make clear the connection between your 
paper and the Digital Comics theme. Proposed papers must be original and 
not have been published already or accepted for publication elsewhere.



- Daniel

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