One-day colloquium (hybrid: online and in-person)
Monday 22 January 2024

Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies
Senate House, Malet Street
London, WC1E 7HU

Open to anyone interested
(Free online registration required)

Over the last 25 years, a growing number of long-form comics (graphic novels) in different languages have adapted texts from early modern Iberian literature, or engaged with other aspects of that historical period. Recent examples from Spain include Las meninas (2014), by Santiago García and Javier Olivares, La vida es sueño (2018), by Ricardo Vilbor, Alberto Sanz, and Mario Ceballos, Francisca Pedraza: Mujer y media (2018), by Almudena del Mazo Revuelta and Ignacio Ruiz Rodríguez, Tirante el Blanco (2019), by Maria Aurèlia Capmany and Jaume Marzal Canós, and Nebrija (2022), by Agustín Comotto.

In light of the rise in popularity of graphic novels and their increasing use in teaching of language, history, literature, and culture, the colloquium aims to foster discussion about how graphic novels ‘translate’ Iberian literary texts as well as historical figures, contexts, and events of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Iberia and its American colonies for a twenty-first-century readership.

The interdisciplinary event hopes to attract researchers (including PhD students) working on (or interested in) graphic novels and early modern Iberia, regardless of their disciplinary background, to facilitate dialogue between different approaches and perspectives.

We are inviting proposals for 20-minute papers relating to any aspect of early modern Iberia in graphic novels. Potential topics include:

• Graphic novels and/as adaptation
• Literary and graphic narration and style
• Word-image relationship
• Graphic novels and the literary canon
• Representation of specific historical figures, events, or contexts
• Fact, faction, and fiction
• Representation of geographical and architectural space
• Representation of gender
• Representation of crisis and violence
• Graphic novel reception
• Graphic novels in teaching early modern Iberia

Please send your 250-word proposal (in English or Spanish) and a short biographical note of up to 100 words to: ImaginingEarlyModernIberia@outlook.com

Submission deadline: 5 November 2023

The organisers will confirm acceptance of proposed papers no later than 13 November. Online registration will open shortly after.

Conference organisers:
Dr Tilmann Altenberg (Cardiff University)
Prof Conxita Domènech (University of Wyoming)

The event is jointly sponsored by Cardiff University and the University of Wyoming. The organisers gratefully acknowledge the Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies’s role as host of the colloquium.