[Commlist] CFP: CSS's 2024 virtual conference "Glitching Comics"

*Comics Studies Society 2024 CFP: Glitching Comics*

In her 2020 publication /Glitch Feminism: A Manifesto/ 
<https://www.versobooks.com/products/460-glitch-feminism>, Legacy 
Russell explores the notion of “/glitch-as-error /with its genesis in 
the realm of the machinic and the digital.” With this framing, she 
argues that glitches might “inform the way we see the AFK 
[Away-From-Keyboard or real] world, shaping how we might participate in 
it toward greater agency for and by ourselves” (8-9). With her sights 
set on social systems of gender, race, and sexuality in particular, 
Russell asks how embodied subjects who defy patriarchal white 
supremacist cisheterosexist norms are positioned or appear as glitches, 
as errors, in digital and AFK spaces. Rather than take for granted the 
normative understanding of glitch-as-error, Russell argues for a 
feminist praxis that reconceives glitches as a form of refusal and a 
means by which to challenge the status quo. Russell is particularly 
interested in how artists record, perform, and embrace the glitch to 
expose our flawed social systems, explore the in-between, and “imagine 
new possibilities of what the body can do, and how this can work against 
the normative” (14). To read Russell’s work online or to hear her 
talking about glitch feminism see here: 
https://www.legacyrussell.com/GLITCHFEMINISM 
<https://www.legacyrussell.com/GLITCHFEMINISM>

Building on Russell’s bold and necessary work, the CSS Conference 
Committee invites members to join us in glitching comics. What can 
errors in production processes of print comics reveal about systems of 
racialization? How might digital reading practices expose industry 
sexism or ableism? What do creators accomplish when they embrace glitchy 
aesthetics? How do comics or comics media that dwell in the in-between 
or sit with discomfort help us to refuse violent social norms? How do 
marginalized creators take advantage of systemic failures?

Like Russell, we recognize the feedback loop between digital and AFK 
spaces so we encourage participants to draw on print or digital comics, 
comics-related media, or texts that actively blur these distinctions. 
The Comics Studies Society invites proposals for 15-minute individual 
papers, pre-formed panels, media objects (such as critical making, 
comics, video, Twine, or performance), and pedagogy or other workshops 
that engage with how comics (across forms, genres, media, experiences, 
regions, and cultures) disrupt the status quo. Topics may include but 
are by no means limited to:

  * “Glitch Refuses”
      o Resistant narratives
      o Texts that defy genre distinctions
      o Subversive reading practices
  * “Glitch Throws Shade”
      o Errors that expose hegemonic social norms
      o Aesthetics that reveal the fallibility of normative ideals
      o Reactivity in fan communities
  * “Glitch is Error”
      o Comics that embrace the unknowable
      o Media that strive for elasticity
      o Historical errors that disrupted the status quo
  * “Glitch is Anti-body”
      o Disability in comics
      o Production processes that prioritize accessibility for disabled
        creators and readers
      o Representations of bodies that glitch “hegemonic normative
        formulations”

  * “Glitch is Virus”
      o Reception of or resistance to AI art in comics
      o The brokenness of labor standards in the comics industry
      o Infection or monstrosity as a “vehicle of resistance” to
        identity norms
  * “Glitch Mobilizes”
      o How digital platforms/modes of creation provide opportunity
      o The promise of “newly proposed worlds” in comics media
      o Fan activism
  * “Glitch is Remix”
      o Retcon as a form of reclamation
      o The rearranging of creative traditions to generate something
        liberatory
      o Repurposing discomfort to reveal truths

Submit 250-word abstracts via the Google Forms below no later than 
11:59pm Central Time (US) on January 14, 2024. All submissions will 
undergo transparent peer review. Notifications will go out in February 
and registration will open in March. The virtual conference will take 
place in June 2024 (exact dates TBD). Submission links can be found 
here: https://comicsstudies.org/css-2024-call-for-papers/ 
<https://comicsstudies.org/css-2024-call-for-papers/>


Please contact the Conference Committee with any questions: 
(comicsstudiesorg /at/ gmail.com) <mailto:(comicsstudiesorg /at/ gmail.com)>

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