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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Call for Papers
The Taste of Comics
Location: Centre Belge de la Bande Dessinée and Hoek 38, Brussels, Belgium
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 are looking for papers based on, but not limited to, any aspects of taste such as:
· changing tastes in comics and graphic novels – e.g. a franchise or character
· artistic styles such as art nouveau, art deco, ligne clair
· kitsch, punk, anti-taste
· cultural tastes and traditions
· synesthesia – tasting words, colours
· graphic gastronomy, depicting food, recipes
· horror and dis-taste – ghouls, vampires, werewolves, cannibalism
· food and romance
· greed and excess
· feasting, fasting, famine
· appetite and the body
· changing appreciations of art and fashion, makeovers
· places and their gastronomic reputations: Belgium and beyond!
As always, papers outside of this theme are also welcomed.
We invite proposals for single 20-minute papers, 60- or 90-minute participatory workshops or roundtables, or three-paper panels. Please complete the online form at https://forms.office.com/e/cwa9dxQeYW, which includes details such as proposal title, your desired format (paper, workshop, panel, roundtable), co-presenter details, in-person or online, abstract (200 words) and biography (100 words). The online form will close at midnight UK time on 31 January 2025, and we will confirm acceptance by 1 March 2025.
We hope this whets your appetite. Please email TheIGNCC@gmail.com with any queries, and keep an eye on our website www.IGNCC.com for more updates and the latest news.
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If you have any queries please email TheIGNCC@gmail.com.
