[Commlist] CFP: Special Collection: Translation, Remediation, Spread: The Global Circulation of Comics in Digital Distribution

A reminder of this upcoming deadline:

The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship
contact email: (jonathan.e.evans /at/ glasgow.ac.uk)

This call was originally published on 13 May 2020 at 
call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu.




Call for Papers


Special Collection: Translation, Remediation, Spread: The Global 
Circulation of Comics in Digital Distribution


Editors: Jonathan Evans, Kathleen Dunley and Ernesto Priego

This full Call for Papers is available to download from the Journal’s 
home page (https://www.comicsgrid.com/)

Timeline:


    CFP made public: May 2020
    Deadline for first drafts: 30 June 2021
    Initial editorial desk review: 30 August 2021
    Peer Reviews due: 16 January 2022
    Revised papers due: 30 June 2022
    Estimated Publication of articles as they become ready: August 2022


Submissions called for the journal’s Research section (3000-7000 words). 
For full submissions information,  please go to 
https://www.comicsgrid.com/about/submissions/.  Please note we do not 
consider submissions on the basis of abstracts only; we only receive and 
consider full versions of submissions via our journal management system .


This Special Collection of The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics 
Scholarship will focus on the global circulation of comics in digital 
forms, from webcomics to subscription services from traditional comics 
publishers. The Collection’s emphasis will be on the international, 
multi-lingual, multi-format, diverse nature of “comics”.


Comics have circulated in their original language and in translation 
since the inception of print: as a physical object, comics (including 
strips in newspapers) can travel across international borders with their 
readers, or they can be translated for publication in new locales. 
Recent technologies have made digital distribution possible, 
theoretically allowing for global access to comics published online 
anywhere in the world as well as the possibility of distributing 
translated versions within a proprietary system.


Translation is central to the global circulation of comics and comics as 
an art form are often experienced in translation (Evans 2017).  While 
there is a growing body of work on the translation and circulation of 
comics (Zanettin 2008, Altenberg and Owen 2015, Mälzer 2015, 
Reyns-Chikuma and Tarif 2016; see overview in Zanettin 2020), little has 
yet addressed the new world of digital distribution and how this is 
affecting translation practices. Work on the digital distribution of 
comics (e.g. Priego 2010, Steirer 2014, Crucifix et al. 2017-19, 
Augureau et al. 2018) has tended not to address this at a global scale 
or to investigate how comics are distributed across languages.


Translation can be both official and unofficial: scanlation -- the fan 
translation (Evans 2020) of comics -- is a vibrant practice that has 
found a home online, but it is unclear how the shift towards digital 
publishing by legacy publishers such as Marvel and DC has changed the 
environment for the practice. Nor is it clear how extensively platforms 
such as Comixology  have embraced translation and international 
distribution, as the French language site includes large quantities of 
untranslated, English language materials. Web comics as born digital 
objects may easily be distributed online, but there is less 
understanding of how they cross linguistic and cultural borders.


For this Special Collection, we are open for submissions that explore 
the intersections between the translation and distribution of comics, 
the latter understood in its most diverse, international sense, with a 
particular focus that goes beyond dominant themes that are 
over-represented in current scholarship. The Special Collection seeks 
original research articles that investigate the ways in which digital 
distribution has opened up, or closed down, access to comics produced 
globally. Are the old centres of the USA, France and Japan still central 
to comics production? Or has comics production been democratised and 
decentralised? How have different comics cultures adapted to and 
capitalised on digital distribution, and how are they reaching readers 
in other cultures (through translation)?


We are especially interested in the reception and translation of comics 
outside of the Anglosphere, which are typically overlooked, but also 
welcome work on American comics. We encourage research on the 
underrepresented areas of non-English language comics, LGBT+ comics, 
women’s comics and comics by people of colour. Contributions may use any 
relevant methodology to address the topic, but should follow the 
journal’s guidelines for submissions.


We call for submissions that are professionally written and presented, 
incorporating high-quality images that authors discuss directly and in 
detail. We will consider submissions from affiliated senior or early 
career scholars, practitioners and independent researchers, as long as 
they fit the journal’s call for papers, scope and editorial guidelines.


We invite energetic writing that is theoretically and interpretively 
bold. While academic rigour, the inclusion and close discussion of 
images and citational correctness are important to us as a precondition, 
a key feature our editors and reviewers will consider is the argument, 
the discovery, the evidence-based eureka moments conveyed in economical, 
precise, and, ideally, subtle prose. We believe academic writing about 
comics should be as striking and immediate as the medium itself.

 References


Altenberg, T and Owen, RJ (eds) 2015 Comics and Translation. Special 
issue of New Readings,15. 
http://ojs.cf.ac.uk/index.php/newreadings/issue/view/18/showToc


Augereau, O, Iwata, M, and Kise, K 2018 A survey of comics research in 
computer science. Journal of Imaging,  4(7): 87. 
DOI:https://doi.org/10.3390/jimaging4070087


Crucifix, B, Dozo, B-O, Rommens, A, and Priego, E (eds) 2017-19 Poetics 
of Digital Comics. Special Collection in The Comics Grid: Journal of 
Comics Scholarship. 
https://www.comicsgrid.com/collections/special/poetics-of-digital-comics/


Evans, J 2017 Comics and translation. In Bramlett, F et al. (eds) The 
Routledge Companion to Comics. London: Routledge. pp. 319-327.


Evans, J 2020 Fan translation. In Baker, M and Saldanha, G (eds) The 
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies 3rd edition. London: 
Routledge. pp. 177-181.


Mälzer, N (ed.) 2015 Comics - Übersetzungen und Adaptationen. Berin: 
Frank & Timme.


Priego, E 2010 The Comic Book in the Age of Digital Reproduction. 
Unpublished thesis (PhD), University College London.


Reyns-Chikuma, C and Tarif, J (eds) 2016 Translation and Comics. Special 
issue of TranscUlturAl,8(2). 
https://journals.library.ualberta.ca/tc/index.php/TC/issue/view/1878


Steirer, G2014 No more bags and boards: collecting culture and the 
digital comics marketplace. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 5(4): 
455-469. DOI:http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2014.913646


Zanettin, F (ed.) 2008 Comics in Translation. Manchester: St Jerome.


Zanettin, F 2020 Comics, manga and graphic novels. In Baker, M and 
Saldanha, G The Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies 3rd 
edition. London: Routledge. pp. 75-79.

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