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 focuses 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 bring 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/

https://buchhandlung-kuckuck.de/

Presentations & Talks

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

Round Table on Comics and Society
 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.