[Commlist] cfp: Cartoon animation: Satire and Subversion symposium

*Monday 17^th  Feb 2020 *

*Animation Research Centre, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, 
Surrey*

*__*

You are invited to submit proposals for conference presentations of 20 
minutes.

**

*Deadline:*16^th December 2019

*Notification of selection:*6^th Jan 2020

*Send proposals to:*(animationresearch /at/ uca.ac.uk)

*_Background_*

*__*

Fifty years ago (in 1969) Oscar winning animator, Bob Godfrey, 
established the Animation course at UCA, which was the first Higher 
Education animation course in the UK and his archive is held at UCA. As 
well as his work in teaching, Godfrey served as mentor and employer to 
many budding animators and is revered as an iconic figure in British 
animation. Although popularly known for his children’s TV series, such 
as/Roobarb and Custard/and/The Do-It-Yourself Animation Show/, Godfrey 
also created a number of more experimental and adult works that drew 
upon traditions of British satire, DADA and Situationism.

To mark the Golden Jubilee of animation at UCA, celebrate the irreverent 
and anarchic humour of Bob Godfrey and re-launch the Animation Research 
Centre at UCA, we are running a symposium in our new Film building at 
Farnham,that will be accompanied by an exhibition of items from 
Godfrey’s archive.

While the main focus of our symposium is on animation, we warmly invite 
interdisciplinary perspectives by scholars from other disciplines such 
as film, performance, illustration, comics, philosophy, psychology, 
queer and gender studies, etc. Our Keynote speakers are Steve Bell, 
Guardian cartoonist and Dr Sharon Lockyer, Director of the Centre for 
Comedy Studies Research, Brunel University.

For its themes, the symposium draws upon Bob Godfrey’s archive to call 
for papers that engage with the following questions:

*_Symposium Themes_*

**

*Politics and propaganda from print to the pixel.*

How have traditions of print cartooning from Hogarth and Punch 
influenced animation?

**

*Laughing in the face of adversity.*

Is humour a form of survival strategy? What is funny for those who are 
historically the focus of caricature and the butt of jokes based on 
stereotypes? What is the comedy of the oppressed? What is satire for the 
subaltern? How are hegemonic discourses around colonialism, class, race, 
gender and regional identity resisted through laughter?

*Dream Girls*

Funny or pathetic? How do we deal with historic cartoon versions of male 
sexual fantasy? What do they say about masculinity? Are they due for a 
feminist re-evaluation?Could they be read as a critique of patriarchy? 
Are humorous films about sexuality made by women different in any way?

*It ain't half hot, Mum*

How do we discuss racial stereotyping and caricature in historical 
animation? What is the relationship between iconic cartoon characters 
and minstrelsy? Are there arguments for re-evaluating controversial 
works such as those made by the Fleischer brothers or Ralph Baksche?

*What are we going to do now?*

What were*t*he influence of traumatic circumstances such as war and PTSD 
on animators during and after the two World Wars of the 20th Century?

*Arty Farty*

Is there a relationship between comic animation and post-war art 
movements such as DADA, situationist and theatre of the absurd?

*Vader his dolly buns: subculture, sexuality and comic codes*

How does insider knowledge of shared cultural conventions, such as camp, 
gender parody and 'secret languages' like Polari, slip undetected into 
mainstream animation? How has theatricality and performativity effected 
animation?

*What's up, Doc?*

What is it that is just so funny about the cartoon character whose 
impossible, plasmatic body defies all the limits of the physical world 
and all social taboos about abjection?

----

This conference is organized by Birgitta Hosea, Emma Reyes, Jim Walker 
(Animation Research Centre)

Exhibition curated by Jim Walker

Supported by Felicity Croydon, UCA Archivist, and Lesley Adams, 
Programme Director for Animation, UCA.

Peer Review Committee: Birgitta Hosea, Chris Pallant, Caroline Ruddell, 
Jim Walker, Paul Ward.

Selected conference papers will be included in a proposal for an 
anthology,*_Cartoon Animation: Satire and Subversion,_*to Palgrave 
MacMillan.

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