TCAF 2022: Photos From The Academic Symposium
by Koom Kankesan
Summary
Photos from the morning panels presented at the Academic Symposium at TCAF, 2023.
The Tornoto Comics Arts Festival academic symposium featured talks by academics researching topics related to comics. Some of these concerns are formal, involving comics language and meaning; others tend to be more sociological and look at comics communities and the practice of comics production and readership. The panels were held at the Marriott Courtyard and the following photos represent morning sessions. The keynote address was delivered by Benjamin Woo from Carleton University. He talked about comics readers and the surveys he’s been conducting in regards to the ways in which his subjects read, collected, and identified with the practice of reading comics:
Kathryn Hemmann from the University of Pennsylvania delivering a talk called “The Role of Dōjinshi in Comic Fanzine Discourse”:
Christopher Sperandio from Rice University delivered a very funny and entertaining discussion of the practice of swiping/homages in comics:
Chelsea Russell of York University and Toronto Metropolitan University along with Steven Hicks from the University of Toronto delivered a joint talk titled “The Marvel Cinematic Universe’s ‘Reflattening’: Minority Audiences and Identity as Figured via Approbation”:
Independent researcher Daniel Marrone discussed the work of the Psychedoolia comics collective and their practices as cartoonists:
Jonathan Bass of Rutgers University gave a talk titled “Conversation in Comics: A Skills-Based Approach”:
More information about the event can be found here:
