[Commlist] cfp: 'The Social, Political and Ideological Semiotics of Comics and Cartoons'

    New Issue and Call for papers of Punctum – International Journal
    of Semiotics

https://iass-ais.org/new-issue-and-call-for-papers-of-punctum-international-journal-of-semiotics/


We are pleased to announce the publication of the Volume 6, Issue 2
(2020) of Punctum-International Journal of Semiotics, the online,
open-access journal of the Hellenic Semiotic Society. This issue is
devoted to "Semiotics of Political Communication", edited by Gregory
Paschalidis. The articles, as well as the whole of the issue, can be
accessed/downloaded at the journal’s website:https://punctum.gr/

We also bring you the new the new call for papers for the Volume 7,
Issue 2 of Punctum-International Journal of Semiotics, devoted to
''The Social, Political and Ideological Semiotics of Comics and 
Cartoons'', edited by Stephan Packard and Lukas R.A. Wilde.

What more can semiotics do for comics? As early as the 1960s and through 
to the first decades of the 21st century, comics studies have attracted 
a large and perhaps disproportionate amount of attention from analytical 
semiotic approaches that foreground description and theory building: 
Their combination of pictures and text offering a challenge to any 
attempt towards a systematic theory of signs, and their experimental 
treatment of their semiotic inventory as well as the genres, imageries, 
and conventions of other media and art forms inviting descriptive 
scrutiny as well as playful engagement. Scott McCloud’s famous 
Understanding Comics (1993), both praised and criticized for its 
essentially semiotic approach, provided the foundation for the rise of 
sequential comics studies. Even the relatively more practice-based 
earlier work of Will Eisner (Comics & Sequential Art, 1985), on which 
McCloud built his own, focuses on a description of formal semiot-ic and 
semantic relationships. Thierry Groensteen’s Système de la bande 
dessinée(1999), on the other hand, elaborated a semiological approach to 
the comics images’ ’iconic solidarity.’ For semantics rather than 
syntax, Umberto Eco’s treat-ment of Superman (1962) had already extended 
a semiological perspective to examining plot and character. The 
influence of these authors might wrongly cloud the plethora of early 
interna-tional contributions to a semiotic study of comics, including 
Ullrich Krafft’s Comics lesen (1978), Ursula Oomen’s Wort – Bild – 
Nachricht (1975), Daniele Barbieri’s Il linguaggio del fumetto (1990), 
and Anne Magnussen’s Peircean approach in Comics & Culture (2000, with 
Hans-Christian Christiansen), among many others. Natsume Fusanosuke’s 
and Takekuma Kentarō’s collection Manga no yomikata (漫画の読み方1995, 
roughly: How to Read Manga) inspired a similar Japa-nese wave of 
formal-aesthetic and semiotic reflections of writing, images, and 
abstract line-art in the manga tradition, although this has hardly been 
noticed internationally due to a lack of translations. More recently, 
the multimodality approach of Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) has given 
rise to new methods, such as Janina Wildfeuer’s empirical discourse 
analysis of comics (2018ff.), Paul Fisher Davis’ multimodal 
systemic-functional linguistics (2019), or large-scale formal corpus 
analytics (cf. Alexander Dunst, Quantitative Analysis of Comics, 2018). 
Simultaneously, the combination of semiotics and cognitive linguistics 
has opened new venues, such as Neil Cohn’s description of distinct 
visual languages of comics (Cohn 2013). And yet, many of these 
approaches have been accused of treating their subjects with arbitrary 
abstraction and an overload of theory, neglecting political and material 
conditions of comics production, contents, distribution, and fandom, and 
reproducing distinctions of class, race, and gender by elevating the 
body depic-tions of a popular genre to the metaphysical dignity of 
seemingly ahistorical semiotic principles (cf. Horrocks 2001; Frahm 
2006). In the face of this criticism, we contend that a semiotic 
approach to comics studies always has and can continue to engender a 
thorough and critical engagement with comic books’ social, political, 
and ideological dimensions.

The naturalization of 'improper,' comical, and deformed shapes in comics 
can be exposed at the very heart of its ideological tendencies and 
implicit traditions. Carefully examining the cartoonish depiction of 
bodies and stereotypes against the political history of caricature 
offers insight into the reproduction processes that structure these 
comical signs. The formation and transformation of plot and figural 
schemata in serial storytelling invites closer looks at the currents 
shaping and tearing at the conventions of both the popular genres and 
experimental or avant-garde forms of comics. The drawing pen’s freedom 
inevitably leads to a pictorial database in which all aspects of the 
depicted world are specifically appropriated and invite interpretation. 
The reinvention of panels, pages, habits, and means of inferences in 
webcomics demand specific formal scrutiny alongside the social 
implications of their extended and postdigital usages. If we are to see 
transnational mainstream comics enter a ‘Blue Age,’ as Adrienne Resha 
has recently argued (2020), it is not least in the reordering of code, 
address, and com-municative situation that the expansion of topics and 
reader bases has to take place. More fundamentally, what has been 
neglected in much of existing comics scholar-ship is the social 
implications of semiotics that should be understood as the exami-nation 
of an inherently social process of “unlimited community” (Peirce), as 
the “science of the life of signs in society” (Saussure). A 
comprehensive understand-ing of sign usage rhetorics requires an 
adequate account of its ideological dimen-sion (Barthes). Against this 
background, we invite abstracts that focus on the socio-political 
semi-otics of comic books, manga, graphic storytelling, and political 
cartooning. More analytically, abstracts can be about topics such as, 
but not limited to:• various forms of cartoonish representation in 
historical context;• new approaches to the pictorial ideology of comics 
conventions and traditions;• studies into the semiotic techniques of 
fandom appropriation and remixes;• engagements with the sequential and 
serial forms of comic books and their social and economic conditions;• 
narratological criticisms and revisions of 'reality principles' and 
'natural' forms of meaning-making;• inter- and transcultural 
adaptations, negotiations, and appropriations as semi-otic 
transcriptions;• research into specific comic genres and their 
conventionalized forms of expres-sions (e.g., superheroes, shōnen manga, 
funny strips, etc.) between conservatism and subversion, and many more.

Prospective authors are asked to submit an abstract of approximately 500 
words by mail to the guest editors, Prof. Dr. Stephan Packard 
((packard /at/ uni-koeln.de)) and Dr. Lukas R.A. Wilde 
((lukas.wilde /at/ uni-tuebingen.de)), including their affiliation and contact 
information. Acceptance of the abstract does not guarantee publication, 
given that all research articles will be subjected to the journal’s 
double peer-review process.

Deadline for Abstracts: April 30, 2021

Notice of Acceptance of the Abstract: May 15, 2021

Deadline for Submission of Full Papers: September 1, 2021

Peer Review Due: November 1, 2021

Final Revised Papers Due: December 1, 2021

Publication Date: Winter 2021-22


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