Joint Conference of the International Bande Dessinée Society and the International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference

 

Tues 24 June – Weds 25 June 2025: Online event

Mon 30 June – Fri 4 July 2025: In-person event, Brussels, Belgium

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The Taste of Comics

 

Location: Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée and Hoek 38, Brussels, Belgium

Keynote speakers:  Irène Le Roy Ladurie (Wednesday 25 June), Eric Dubois (Monday 30 June) and Eszter Szép (Friday 4 July)

Timetable: Tues 24 June (Zoom); Weds 25 June (Zoom); Mon 30 June (CBBD); Tuesday 1 Jul (Hoek38); Weds 2 July (visit to Royal Library of Belgium’s Comics Periodicals Display); Thurs 3 July (Hoek 38), Fri 4 July (CBBD)

Registration: This will open in June. We are happy to announce the conference will be free this year, thanks to the support we have received from multiple institutions (Ghent University, Hoek 38, The Comic Art Museum, Routledge, Intellect and more!)

Summary/CFP: Taste is constructed through culture, aesthetics and the senses. What is good taste and bad taste? In the past comics were aligned with trash culture evoking notions of good literature and bad literature, good art and bad art. How and why were these hierarchies constructed? Are they still relevant? Changing tastes can make a topic more appealing or less appealing and inform how we view a place, text, theme, author, or artist. Aesthetic tastes have informed the reception of styles such as the école de Marcinelle or Hergé’s clear line. There are issues of good taste and restraint, bad taste and excess in art movements from the Classical to the Gothic or the architectural taste of the Cités obscures. There are also issues of taste in the consumption of art or fashion as in, for instance, paper cut out dolls and makeover stories.

Speaking more literally, graphic gastronomy is filled with stories about taste and food in in autobiographies like Lucy Knisley’s Relish: My Life in the Kitchen. Food features prominently in manga of cookery and romance are found in manga such as Kitchen Princess by Natsumi Ando and Miyuki Kobayashi and LGBTQA+ manga such as Fumi Yoshinaga’s What Did You Eat Yesterday, or Jarrett Melendez’s Chef’s Kiss. Food features in instruction books like Robin Ha’s Cook Korean!: A Comic Book with Recipes and adventure stories skilfully whisked together with instruction as in Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki’s Oishinbo a la carte #1: Japanese Cuisine.

Bakhtinian excess is evoked in characters such as Capitaine Haddock’s drinking, Garfield’s love of Lasagne, and Scooby Doo and Shaggy who will eat anything. Matter-Eater Lad, from the Legion of Superheroes, of course, can eat anything. Eating can also be dis-tasteful in stories such as Chew, a detective who gets psychic impressions from whatever food he eats. And at the opposite end of excess is the tragedy of famine in graphic novels like Red Harvest: A Graphic Novel of the Terror Famine in Soviet Ukraine (Michael Cherkas) or starvation as in Art Spiegelman’s Maus.

We hope this whets your appetite!

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If you have any queries please email TheIGNCC@gmail.com. Attendees please view the IGNCC Code of Conduct.