Participation

Comics and Migration: Practices and Representation

Call for Article Proposals

Editors: Ralf Kauranen, Olli Löytty, Aura Nikkilä & Anna Vuorinne (University of Turku, Finland)

Deadline for proposal abstracts: September 30, 2020
Applicants notified: October 15, 2020
Deadline for first versions: February 28, 2021
Comments for the first versions: March 31, 2021
Deadline for the final versions: May 31, 2021
Manuscript to the publisher: August 2021
Publication: 2022

Contributions are invited for a collection of texts on comics and migration.
We wish to see texts that approach the topic both as practices and as representations. On the one hand, what is done with and to comics in relation to migration? What are the political, ethical and material circumstances and effects of comics on migration? How is the comics form used and applied? On the other hand, how does migration affect comics on different levels: as individual works, in terms of genres or as a field, etc.? We want to encourage writing that approaches comics as representations and practices engaged with the world, forming it and being formed by it. In line with this theoretical outlook, we invite both original scholarly articles on the topic and experiential descriptions and analyses of projects or artistic productions involving or addressing comics and migration.

Comics and migration. Belonging, narration, activism

is a project, funded by the Kone foundation, that will be actualized between 2018–2020.

In this project, researchers and comics artists together examine how comics represent migration. The project group consists of Warda Ahmed, Ralf Kauranen, Olli Löytty, Aura Nikkilä, Hannele Richert, Johanna Rojola and Anna Vuorinne.

The project ponders on how stories about migration are told in, for example, autobiographical and documentary comics or how comics can be adapted in antiracist activism and activism concerning migration and refugees. What kinds of possibilities are there for comics to work as a platform for the social and political involvement of different people?

The project “Comics and migration” produces both research and comics. The comics are published, among other platforms, on this website. The site collects comics of members of the project and comics from other sources, such as the so-called grassroots comics from the workshops of our collaborator World Comics Finland.

Migration has become a salient subject in contemporary comics both internationally and in Finland. Comics help us understand migration as a multifaceted phenomenon and can also, at their best, help overcome feelings of detachment and rootlessness connected to migration and unravel contradictions in problematic processes of social exchange and communication.

Comics can also give a voice to marginalized groups and individuals in society. When people are on the move, belonging to a place or a culture becomes a central political question defining people’s status, experiences and being. Therefore, it is important to ask, whose stories are being told, whose voices are being heard and who remains invisible.

Comics is a versatile form of art. The means of communication characteristic to comics – series of panels, the combination of pictures and words, the spatiality of a page, a spread or a tome, and the drawn image – give multiple possibilities for realizing stories about migration.

Sarjakuva ja siirtolaisuus, Comics and Migration

Open call!

Take part in the conversation and send us your migration-themed comic by October 15th 2019.
The comic could deal with for example multilingualism, cultural diversity or mobility.

We will choose from the material sent to us a selection of comics
that will be published on the internet site Comics and Migration.

Here's the address to which you should send your works: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Please send your pictures in one of the following formats; pdf, jpg or png.
For large files (6MB or more) please use: wetransfer
Please add your name and email and only send your own material or make sure to ask for permission and add contact info if you send someone else's work.
Thank you!
Previously published material is also accepted.