Call for submissions for _The Cult of Difficulty: Critical Approaches to the Comics of Chris Ware_, edited by Dave Ball, Dickinson College, and Martha Kuhlman, Bryant University.
_The Cult of Difficulty_ is a proposed collection of essays on the work of Chicago-based contemporary graphic novelist/comic book artist/cartoonist Chris Ware. Author of _Jimmy Corrigan, The Smartest Kid on Earth_ (2000, winner of the 2001 Guardian First Book Award), _Quimby the Mouse_ (2003), and _The Acme Novelty Library_ (2005), Ware has quickly emerged as one of the central figures in contemporary comics. We are currently seeking abstracts for 20- to 25-page articles that analyze Ware’s work, with particular interest in multi- and interdisciplinary approaches to his oeuvre. A university press has already expressed interest in this collection, and we are hoping to build upon the MLA panel on Ware’s comics this past December.
Essays that address the following questions are especially encouraged, but other topics are also welcome:
-- How do Ware’s texts raise questions about representations of race, gender, class, and disability? In particular we are eager to receive analyses of _Jimmy Corrigan_ and _Acme Novelty Library_ that engage with these topics.
-- How has Ware’s work as an editor, anthologist, and collector shaped the landscape of contemporary comics and informed his own corpus?
-- In what ways are questions of narrative and temporality engaged and complicated in Ware's texts? What insights do narratological and semiotic approaches offer to a reading of Ware’s comics?
-- How does Ware's work intersect with advertising culture, web sites, media, and packaging?
-- What is Ware's relationship to the literary canon (both in terms of graphic and conventional literature) and how does he re-imagine our relationship to the idea of literariness?
Please send 500-1000 word abstracts (or completed articles), c.v., and contact information in Word format to warecollection@gmail.com by March 10th.
Papers from a diversity of disciplinary orientations and methodological approaches are especially encouraged.
You may also contact Martha Kuhlman if you have questions: mkuhlman@bryant.edu
Papers from a diversity of disciplinary orientations and methodological approaches are especially encouraged.
You may also contact Martha Kuhlman if you have questions: mkuhlman@bryant.edu
