Call for Proposals: Disability-Themed Comic Symposium: ‘Cripping’ the Comic Con 2014

Naomi Grossman

Back again for its second year is the highly anticipated symposium “Cripping” the Comic Con. This year’s theme, “Take Away the Suit and What Are You?” provides participants with the opportunity to engage in a broad array of reflective discussions about the representations of disability that exist “beneath the surface” and explicitly within mainstream popular cultures both nationally and internationally. It will focus particularly on the popular culture phenomena that are comic books, graphic novels and manga.

Proposals are being accepted until Feb. 1 at http://crippingthecon.com/2014-call-for-proposals/.

The symposium will take place April 9-10 on the Syracuse University campus with keynote speaker Naomi Grossman, who is best known for her portrayal of the fan favorite “Pepper,” on FX’s “American Horror Story: Asylum.”

Anyone can participate in the symposium. It aims to create an inclusive space and to encourage opportunities for all participants, particularly students and emerging scholars, to share their work, though all are welcome to submit ideas for consideration. Additionally, submissions incorporating genres that do not typically receive sustained attention in mainstream scholarly spaces are encouraged. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

• comix, anime, motion comics
• films, movies, videos, television shows (including reality TV, animated TV)
• advertising, newspapers, magazines
• comic cons, dragon cons, geek cons, movie cons, cosplay, cult fandom, the “geek syndrome”
• visual arts, painting, photography, deviantART, alternative and alternate art forms
• poetry, expressive arts, popular fiction, imagetext, fanfic, slash, alternative and alternate forms of literacies
• material culture, multimedia, social media, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube
• websites, blogs, memes, zines
• games, gaming, toys, action figures

This event is meant not only to address often unmet needs in scholarly spaces and beyond, but also to address the inadequate attention to disability in popular culture, the reception of popular culture within many scholarly spaces and various other topics that will also be consistent with values that underscore the disability rights movement.

For more information on submission guidelines and instructions, and the symposium, visit: http://crippingthecon.com/2014-call-for-proposals/.