Today from 5.30-7pm a combined lecture and masterclass by Frederik Byrn Køhlertof will be hosted in BuzzHouse!
Why do people draw their life stories in comics form? What does it mean to represent the self visually using the simplified and hand-drawn imagery of graphic narrative? How do marginalized artists use the form to draw themselves into cultural visibility? And conversely, how can hegemonic racial whiteness be interrogated and made visible when the color white is typically represented on the comics page as nothing more than an absence? In this talk, Frederik Byrn Køhlert will consider these and other questions raised by the recent boom in autobiographical comics, with a special focus on strategies for drawing attention to racial whiteness in order to challenge its transparency and make it visible on the page. Only by drawing and seeing the white human in comics as white, in other words, can we begin to address the implicit racial biases that result from the overwhelming formal naturalization of the comics page.
Frederik Byrn Køhlert is Associate Professor of Media and American Studies at the University of East Anglia. He is the author of Serial Selves: Identity and Representation in Autobiographical Comics and the editor of two companion book series for Routledge on Gender, Sexuality, and Comics Studies. In addition to his work on comics and related visual media, he is also the author and editor of two books on the literary and cultural history of Chicago.
Registration: Free and open to the public. Please register in advance by 4 April 2022 via info@amsterdamcomics.com
Credits: RMA and PhDs who are members of one of The Netherlands’ national research schools can obtain 1 ECTS via The Netherlands Institute for Cultural Analysis (NICA). The conditions for obtaining credits are: completing assigned preliminary reading, attending the lecture/masterclass, and writing a 1500 word response paper (for a combined total of 28 hours/1 ECTS). To register, please send an email to the organizers at info@amsterdamcomics.com noting (where applicable) your programme, university, and consent to share with NICA your contact details to receive credits. Coordinators: Erin La Cour (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam), Toni Pape (University of Amsterdam), and Rik Spanjers (University of Amsterdam)
During the seminar the Round Room of BuzzHouse will be closed. You are still able to make use of the Open Space.
