Justice Framed: Law Text Culture special issue (2012)

Many of you may already be aware of this publication, but it remains a highly useful resource for those of us interested in exploring the intersections of comics and law: the 2012 special issue of Law Text Culture 'Justice Framed: Law in Comics and Graphic Novels'. This open-access volume contains a wide variety of legal and comics analysis, from the development of a metaphor of 'eating' for understanding jurisprudence via Chew, through the significance of comics villains' aesthetic appearance, to the politics of retribution in the Punisher. Here's a handy list of contents:.

• Introduction - Justice framed: law in comics and graphic novels
  Luis Gomez Romero and Ian Dahlman

• Krazy Kat (review)
  K N Llewellyn

• The legal surrealism of George Herriman's Krazy Kat
  Ian Dahlman

• 'What had been many became one': continuity, the common law, and Crisis on Infinite Earths
  Benjamin Authers

• Justice in the gutter: representing everyday trauma in the graphic novels of Art Spiegelman
  Karen Crawley and Honni van Rijswijk

• 'Sakaarson the World Breaker': violence and différance in the political and legal theory of Marvel's sovereign
  Chris Lloyd

• Chewing in the name of justice: the taste of law in action
  Anita Lam

• Magic and modernity in Tintin au Congo (1930) and the Sierra Leone Special Court
  René Provost

• Spider-Man, the question and the meta-zone: exception, objectivism and the comics of Steve Ditko
  Jason Bainbridge

• Comic book mythology: Shyamalan’s Unbreakable and the grounding of good in evil
  Timothy D Peters

• ‘Come a Day there Won’t be Room for Naughty Men Like Us to Slip About at All’: the multi-media outlaws of Serenity and the possibilities of post-literate justice
  Kieran Tranter

• The aesthetics of supervillainy
  Jack Fennell

• The punisher and the politics of retributive justice
  Kent Worcester

• ‘Riddle me this…?’ Would the world need superheroes if the law could actually deliver ‘justice’?
  Cassandra Sharp

• Noir justice: Law, crime and morality in Díaz Canales and Guarnido’s Blacksad: Somewhere within the shadows and Arctic-nation
  Jane Hanley

• The story of Bohemia or, why there is nothing to rebel against anymore
  John Hanamy

Justice Framed: Law in Comics and Graphic Novels (2012 ) Law Text Culture 16(1)

Visualising Law and Gender Conference, 3-4 Sep 2014

Centre for Law and Culture, St Mary's University
Visualising Law and Gender Conference
3-4 September 2014

Law both regulates cultural representations and creates them. These dual themes will be explored in a conference focused upon the twin strands of law and visual culture, and law and gender.

How does law regulate gender; how does it regulate images? What is/are the relationship/s between visual culture and the gendering of law? How have gendered divisions structured the legal profession and practice, and what is the role of the visual in understanding such complexities? How can visual culture and representation challenge or enlighten the gendered dimensions of law? This conference is aimed at exploring the intersections of law, gender, and the visual in an effort to address such questions and related concerns.

Papers are sought in relation to the dual themes of the conference:

Visualising Law: Intersection(s) of law with visual culture, in all its manifestations (including graphic fiction and Graphic Justice, TV, film, photo-journalism, art and art history). The conference welcomes an exploration of ‘law’ and ‘visual culture’ in the broadest sense of these terms.

Gendering Law: The representation of gender in the law, historically and today, and the law's responses to wider cultural representations (topics may include but are not limited to gendering legal history, law as gendered spectacle, sexuality and the law). 

Papers traversing or combining these broad themes are particularly welcome.

More information here: Visualising Law and Gender CFP

Nancy Silberkleit on Comics as an Educational Resource

Here is a very interesting talk from Nancy Silberkleit, CEO of Archie Comics (and, incidentally, speaker at the 2013 Graphic Justice One-Day Symposium). She discusses the ways in which she believes comics and comic books can be an inspiring and practically useful tool for educating younger generations. Not just in terms of increasing reading skills, but also by helping them engage with complex social issues such as bullying in an accessible and entertaining format.

Tintin Symposium UCL

Some of you interested in Graphic Justice may also be interested in this Tintin symposium at UCL. The link to their CFP is below, and they are interested in (but not limited to) the following possible themes: 

• Tintin and Hergé
• Tintin and comic book history
• Tintin and detective fiction
• Tintin and the adventure story
• Tintin in translation
• Censorship of Tintin
• Tintin’s spinoffs
• Tintin in adaptations
• Tintin in films
• Tintin fan culture
• Tintin and geography
• Tintin and travel
• Tintin as cultural phenomenon
• Travel and colonialism
• Treatment of race in Tintin
• Snowy as sidekick
• Animal welfare
• EcoTintin
• Tintin and gender
• Tintin and masculinity; homosocial relations
• Tintin in criticism

http://fanstudies.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/cfp-the-adventures-of-tintin-symposium-london-10-january-2014/

Comics and Pedagogy (and Rock Music)--A Chris Boge Guest Post

Dear All,

I've just had an article published in a journal edited by the Austrian government that may be of interest to you for several reasons. Although the journal's title translates as Media Impulse: Contributions to Media Pedagogy, in my article on 'Visualizing Histories and Stories' I touch on topics located in the field of law and the humanities that cannot be understood without contextualisation (e.g. vigilantism, justice, fascism, crime). Moreover, those of us working with students may benefit from a pedagogical perspective on and close reading of (excerpts from) classic graphic novels like Watchmen and Maus -  at least if we intend to take the first part of the compound Graphic Justice as seriously as the second. There are reasons why (reading and teaching) graphic fiction differs from (reading and teaching) other cultural products, such as e.g. novels and films, and in my article I'm trying to briefly highlight what makes (reading and teaching) graphic novels (a) unique (experience) (e.g. simultaneity) as well as what are the features graphic novels share in common with other forms of storytelling (e.g. plot structures). Having said all that, it's an article, not a book - there was a word limit which I exceeded :-) Here's the link to theonline version.

Secondly, I've written and released a rock song that is as much the result of international cooperation as of interdisciplinary thinking. As I'm sure you will notice, the lyrics of the song were inspired by the papers I gave at Birkbeck and St Mary's. "Superheroes" was recorded, mixed and mastered in Cologne, Los Angeles, and Atlanta, GA. It seems to me that many people think that academics are boring people who, somewhat belatedly, set out to analyze cultural products created by artists. I believe that is a misconception, and in a way "Superheroes" proves that the thesis can be turned on its head: In this case, a cultural product came into existence after someone had done research on a topic in a specialized academic field (law and culture). Below you'll find links to CD Baby and iTunes, "Superheroes" should also be on amazon, spotify etc. by now. If you like what you hear, drop me a line and I'll send you the song for free. 

All best, Chris.

http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/voiceintheattic6

http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/superheroes-single/id725741187