Masterclass & Lectures – How to Analyze Image-Texts
Amsterdam Comics welcomes Prof. Roger Sabin (Central St. Martins London) and Prof. Laurence Grove (University of Glasgow)
Date: 14 April 2016, 10:00-17:00
Location: 10.00-13.00 University Library – Potgieterzaal / 13.00-17.00 University Library – Doelenzaal
Singel 425, Amsterdam
Master class open to: RMa students who are a member of a Dutch Graduate Research School (onderzoekschool). RMa students who are members of OSL will have first access. RMa Students will receive 1 EC for attending the full day and preparing an object of inquiry for the master class.
Registration
To an increasing degree, the image has found its way back into literature. But where the inclusion of images in literary texts is still often seen as a liminal phenomenon, it has been the central challenge for researchers in the burgeoning field of comics studies for decades. The comic book medium, especially in its more recent rebranding as the “graphic novel”, challenges preconceived notions of the fringes of the literary in both the sense of what constitutes the textual and good taste. Rather than redrawing the boundaries between these media and genres, this master class aims to explore how concepts from both of these theoretical backgrounds can inform the ways in which we look at cultural objects in which text and image are combined. This course, then, is for students who are interested in analyzing comics, illustrations in literary texts, book covers, digital literature, and other ways in which image and text cohabitate cultural objects in the 20th and 21st century. Participating students will be required to present a research object that they find interesting and/or challenging in this context, which will then be discussed by Prof. Roger Sabin (Central St. Martins London) and Prof. Laurence Grove (University of Glasgow) who are experts in the fields of comics history and image-text interactions more broadly. Preceding the master class are two public lectures by Grove and Sabin, which participants must also attend.
Preliminary Programme
9:30-10:00
Registration
10:00-10:15
Welcome
10:15-11:30
Public Lecture, Roger Sabin: “The Origins of Comics Criticism”
11:30-11:45
Coffee Break
11:45-13:00
Public Lecture, Laurence Grove: “Comics Invention: The Making Of”
13:00-15:00
Lunch Break
15:00-17:00
Master class with Roger Sabin and Laurence Grove
Prof. Roger Sabin “Comics versus Books”
This lecture will survey the boundaries of the debate on “culture” sparked by comics entering the mainstream in the late 19th century, looking at why printed images were so distrusted, and why the binary between books (“improving”) and comics (“corroding”) proved so difficult to challenge. The talk will suggest that the debate marks the origin of modern formulations of “pop culture.” In exploring the ways in which comics were perceived by critics in the late Victorian period, with a focus on the UK (at the time the world-leading producer of comics), it is possible to highlight fears about negative effects on “moral and political” behaviour. This entailed commentary on comics that involved the kind of language we might associate with backlashes against them in the 20th century (“a plague,” “a fungus,” etc.). But, as this lecture will argue, it could also encompass a celebration of comics as the “authentic vernacular” —the beating heart of the country.
Roger Sabin is Professor of Popular Culture at Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London. His books include Adult Comics: An Introduction (Routledge), and Comics, Comix and Graphic Novels (Phaidon). He reviews graphic novels for the press and radio.
Prof. Laurence Grove, “Comic Invention: The Making Of”
This lecture debates the debate over the world’s first comic through an examination of the ups and downs of the making of the forthcoming comics exhibition Comic Invention. Looking at graphic narrative in its widest sense, the exhibition challenges various assertions of the origin of comics through showcasing treasures from the ancient Egyptians alongside Hogarth and Rembrandt, challenges the perceived boundaries between art and comics through the work of Picasso, Lichtenstein, Télémaque, Hockney, and Warhol, and challenges the notions of the original and copy in comics through the first major display of original drawings by graphic artist Frank Quitely of DC Comics. In light of these challenges, the exhibition establishes Scotland as home to the world’s first comic, The Glasgow Looking Glass of 1825, as a counterpoint to the original manuscript and initial printed edition of Rodolphe Töpffer’s Histoire de Monsier Jabot (c. 1833), to be displayed for the first time worldwide thanks to a generous Los Angeles loan.
Laurence Grove is Professor of French and Text/Image Studies and Director of the Stirling Maxwell Centre for the Study of Text/Image Cultures at the University of Glasgow. His research focuses on historical aspects of text/image forms, and in particular bande dessinée. He is President of the International Bande Dessinée Society (‘www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ibds’). As well as serving on the consultative committees of a number of journals, he is co-editor of European Comic Art. Laurence (also known as Billy) has authored (in full, jointly or as editor) nine books, including Comics in French (Berghahn, 2010 and 2013) and approximately fifty chapters or articles. He is currently working on Comic Invention exhibition that will open at The Hunterian, Glasgow, in March 2016, and has long terms hopes of seeing a National Comics Academy.