Presentations & Talks
COMICSNeT - Climate, Outreach, Migration, Intersectionality, New Technologies in/through Comics Studies
On 9 & 10 September 2024 I will be at COMICSnet, an iCOnMICs Training School, at the University do Minho (Braga-Portugal), presenting my research on girlhood in comics together with dr. Nicoletta Mandolini.
Playing (with) Magic
I was part of the Playthings & Playtimes symposium organised by Prof. Ben Highmore and Prof. Hannah Field at the University of Sussex.
My online paper discussed magic tricks in the movable sections of children's periodicals from different European countries between 1850 and 1950 (Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Spain). Who is asked to perform which tricks, what does this tell us about the remediation of nineteenth-century parlour magic books, how these tricks are gendered scripts, and how contemporary magic toy sets continue or contradict these ideas. The below example is from German interbellum periodical Dideldum, from January 1938.
Seen and Heard: Voices of Transnational Girlhood(s) on Identity, Gender, and Culture Conference (University of Warwick, Simona di Martino and Anna Gasparini)
My talk focused on the three volumes published since 2017 of the German comics series on three girls: Nika, Lotte, Mangold! by Thomas Wellmann.
Instead of reviewing the series myself, I brought together reader responses through a survey I did with German child readers (thanks to the lovely Miriam at Kuckuck Buchhandlung in Munich) and reviews found on online blog posts by children, adolescents and adults.
https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/cross_fac/ias/researchandnetworks/calendar/upcomingevents/girlhood/
Thanks to Adrienne Resha and the Comics Studies Society for allowing me to discuss my PhD with Adrienne Resha, Eleanor Ty, Brannon Costello, and Jonathan Gayles.
Workshops on Comics
Op 19 januari introduceerde ik drie klassen uit het vijfde middelbaar aan het SJO in Oostende tot de Vlaamse strips. We bespraken hoe strips werken, wat een beeldroman is en welke termen je kan gebruiken om ze te bespreken. Leerlingen kozen een strip om thuis te lezen. Hopelijk een begin van een hele ontdekkingstocht.
Online Presentation on Spanish Mickey magazine 1935-36
Introducción y discusión: Prof. Diana Castilleja (VUB), Prof. Joe Sutliff Sanders (Cambridge), Prof. Lieve Behiels (KULeuven
With generous funding of the International Ilaria Alpi Library in Parma and thanks to the organisational skills of the director of Boston College, Caterina Dacci, 5 October offered students and pupils insights into "i mestieri del fumetti". Which jobs can one take up in comics? In the round table "Fumetti e società", I discussed my research on girlhood with two comics artists: Cristina Portolano and Pat Carra. Important keywords in that conversation were: art as a means to make the unbearable, bearable; the importance of community, authenticity, and diverse points of view. I warmly thank Pat and Cristina for this lovely talk and hope the students enjoyed it.
left to right: Eva Van de Wiele, Pat Carra, Alessia Mangiavillano, Cristina Portolano.
background: cartoons by Pat Carra.
Thank you for the lovely image, copyright: Marco Turambar.
Round Table on Comics & Child(ish)ness with Frauke Pauwels
As part of the Comics, the Children and Childishness conference,
Dragana Radanovic (KULeuven & LUCA) chaired our round table "Manifestations of Child(ish)Ness" in which Frauke Pauwels (Universiteit Antwerpen) and I talked about definitions of child(ish)ness in different corpora: Frauke discussed Peter Hollindale's childness and applied it to Dutch books by van de Vendel and Van Leeuwen; I discussed contemporary children's comics magazines from Germany (Polle), France (Biscoto), and Belgium (Cuistax) and how they "script" child readers' behaviour.