CFP: The Other 1980s: Reframing Comics' Crucial Decade ~ Edited Collection | Louisiana State University & Harper College, U.S.





Deadline for Submissions: January 31, 2018

We invite abstracts for essays that shift our focus to forgotten and neglected comics and graphic narratives of the 1980s published for the English-speaking market in North America and the UK. This collection will provide readers and scholars with a more complete understanding of a robust era of ambitious comics publishing, one whose products have not always easily squared with the dominant tendencies in comics studies: open-ended serials that do not translate neatly to the graphic novel format beloved by literature departments; vast superhero narratives with no connection to the Marvel or DC Universes; idiosyncratic and often experimental minicomics and zines; offbeat science-fiction and fantasy adventures that have never been collected or reprinted; and other such square pegs. 

This collection not only aims to broaden our understanding of the context from which comics such as Spiegelman’s Maus and Moore and Gibbons’s Watchmen emerged but also to revise conventional histories of this vital period in comics history, positioning works that have long been seen as peripheral or even disposable at the center of the frame.

Please send a two-page abstract and a CV to Brannon Costello [bcostell@lsu.edu] and Brian Cremins [bcremins@harpercollege.edu]. Please also contact us with any questions.