Comics workshop

Comics workshop, with presentations by: 

Armelle Blin-Rolland (Bangor): Bande dessinée, ecoliteracy, environmental justice 

Barbara Spadaro (Liverpool): Comics and graphic novels in the (languages) curriculum: memory, mobility and translation 

Alexandra Lloyd (Oxford): Encountering difficult histories in German-language comics.

This workshop will be held in person only. It will include an opportunity to reflect on the comics seminar convened this year by AMES, Education and MMLL, and the possibility of sustaining a comics community at the University of Cambridge. To allow booking of refreshments, please contact Charles Forsdick (crf41@cam.ac.uk) by Friday 17 May 2024 to indicate if you plan to attend.

Abstracts

Armelle Blin-Rolland (Bangor): Bande dessinée, ecoliteracy, environmental justice 

This paper develops the concept of ‘ecological storylines’ to reflect on the role that comics have to play in cultural conversations about and in the face of environmental crises, as well as the potential of the medium in what I call a ‘greener’ Modern Languages, with at its core the interactions of languages and nature-cultures, in ways deeply entangled with decolonising and decentring the field.

This paper will draw on case studies from the francophone world in bandes dessinées that address a range of environmental issues in Brittany, the Mediterranean, and the DRC, to discuss the possibilities offered by the medium to challenge anthropocentrism and sketch an ecopolitics centred on justice both for the human and the nonhuman.

This paper will report on local impacts and benefits of this research for education by sharing findings from my project ‘Cwricwlwm Ieithoedd Modern Gwyrddach i Gymru/A Greener Modern Languages Curriculum for Wales’, which explores the links between environmental awareness, creativity and international language learning through bande dessinée. Year 5, 6, 8 and 10 pupils from across North Wales took part in research-informed creative workshops with comics artist-in-residence Anne Benoliel Defreville, during which they created their own eco-bandes dessinées and a multilingual ‘natural mural’. Bande dessinée emerged as a powerful medium for fostering ecoliteracy through a creative and critical understanding of sustainability rooted in resistance, justice – and hope.

Dr Armelle Blin-Rolland is a Lecturer in French and Francophone Studies at Bangor University, Wales, UK. Her research specialisms include French and Francophone environmental humanities; bande dessinée and text/image studies; and adaptation and intermediality. She has published widely on these topics, including in European Comic Art, Ecozon@, Modern Languages Open and Modern and Contemporary France. Her first monograph, Adapted Voices, was published by Legenda in 2015. Her current project investigates the relationship between narrative, space and the environment in contemporary France, with a focus on sites of violence and resistance and from the perspectives of multispecies, decolonial, feminist, queer and disabled ecologies.

Barbara Spadaro (Liverpool): Comics and graphic novels in the (languages) curriculum: memory, mobility and translation 

Over the last years, comics production and pedagogy have been examining ways in which comics can be used in various learning contexts. In the Languages curriculum, comics have been introduced in many areas and with many different purposes, from language acquisition to the development of intercultural or multimodal literacy. This presentation focuses on ‘Comics and Graphic Novels: Memory and Transcultural Mobility’, a research-led module designed in transnational perspective at the University of Liverpool. Through a specific focus on memory, history and translation, the module develops a language-sensitive approach to reading and studying comics and comics cultures, beyond the Anglosphere. Students are introduced to comics and graphic novels as multimodal and increasingly multilingual texts developing complex and imaginative communication strategies. The syllabus features both classic and contemporary authors, exploring the relationship between comics and narratives of History; comics and cultural and racial stereotypes; and comics, multilingualism and translation.

Dr Barbara Spadaro is a cultural historian of Italian migration and colonialism in Africa and the Mediterranean, based in the Department of Languages, Cultures and Film at the University of Liverpool. She was PDRA for the AHRC Theme ‘Translating Cultures’ and for the large grant Transnationalizing Modern Languages (TML). Her work on comics, memory and translation appears in the book series "Transnational Modern Languages" with Liverpool University Press, in the article The transcultural comics of Takoua Ben Mohamed: memory and translation a fumetti (“Modern Italy”, 2020;25(2) doi:10.1017/mit.2019.74) and in the Special Issue of the “Journal of Comics and Graphic Novels” (14, 2023, IV), Transnational Italian Comics: Memory, Migration, Transformation, co-edited with Dr Daniele Comberiati (University of Montpellier).

Alexandra Lloyd (Oxford): Encountering difficult histories in German-language comics.

Graphic literature has made a significant contribution in the past two decades to the cultural memory of the Nazi past in the German-speaking lands. Such material includes graphic adaptations of literary texts, as well as original works that engage a complex interweaving of imaginative approaches to the past with documentation and ephemera from the period. They take the form of life writing, oral testimony, and narratives based on eye-witness accounts, depicting a diverse range of experiences including those the regime nurtured and protected, and those it persecuted. The commemorative spaces of the Third Reich continue to be hotly contested, and such works contribute directly to ongoing debates about cultural representation.

This paper examines the ways in which recent German-language graphic narratives depict the history and legacy of the Third Reich and considers ways in which such works can be used within Modern Languages as part of a curriculum of language acquisition, translation, and cultural understanding.

Dr Alexandra Lloyd is Fellow by Special Election in German at St Edmund Hall, and Lecturer in German at Magdalen College and University College, University of Oxford. Her research interests include cultural memories of war and dictatorship, representations of children and childhood, and graphic literature. She is the author of Childhood, Memory, and the Nation: Young Lives under Nazism in Contemporary German Culture (Legenda, 2020) and Defying Hitler: The White Rose Pamphlets (Bodleian Library Publishing, 2022).

For further details, please contact the seminar organisers: Charles Forsdick (crf41@cam.ac.uk), Yaron Peleg (yp240@cam.ac.uk) and Joe Sutliff Sanders (jcs217@cam.ac.uk)