Call for Contributions to Edited Book: SINOPHONE COMICS: NEW PERSPECTIVES

This project explores comics art addressing issues pertaining to ethnic Chinese groups, produced in Asian countries with a predominantly Chinese population (China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore), but also beyond Asia. It considers texts and practices of production, dissemination or reception. With special emphasis on recent comics, it is also open to contributions adopting an outlook with contemporary resonance upon earlier comics.

This project is also envisioned as a platform for reflection on the contemporary world. Contributors are encouraged to consider new social, political, cultural processes or issues of current concern, and to engage in dialogue with ongoing debates in cultural and media studies, on topics such as neoliberalism, postcolonialism, environment and the anthropocene, (media) technologies and their effects etc.

Suggested themes:

• the concept of 漫畫/漫画and its implications: blurring distinctions between comics and cartoons; connections with (and dis-connections from) manga and their potential ideological or economic motivations;
• the concept of Sinophone; its localized nature in various multilingual/multicultural configurations; artists’ self-positioning with regard to this sphere;
• relevance of the nation and transnational connections: what kinds of actors are involved in claiming/shaping cultural identification within and beyond the nation, how and for what kinds of audiences?
• the role of comics in reproducing/challenging colonial cultural hierarchies;
• mediality – historically situated ways and means of mediation shaping access to social reality
• materiality of comics – meanings and impact on marketing, purchase, consumption, reading experiences etc.
• formal strategies employed to represent recent disruptive changes affecting larger groups or individuals’ personal lives;
• new practices or genres as outcomes of institutional changes at various levels (national, regional, global) and of transnational exchange;
• new patterns of practice involving creative professionals; cultural capital articulated in comics – possessed, constructed and perceived by producers and/or consumers;
• new patterns of funding for comics – forms; sustainability; transmedia networks

Chapter length: 8,000 words.
Abstract submission (300 words, with 100-word bio): by 20 August 2022.
Manuscript submission: by 20 January 2023.

For further information, please contact the book editor, Dr. Adina Zemanek (aszemanek@uclan.ac.uk).