Comics and the Latin American City

Over the past couple of decades Latin American comics have been undergoing something of a renaissance, evident in growing numbers of publications, festivals, and digital communities. Though we still cannot refer to comics industries, burgeoning transnational comics enterprises are shaping a regional comics discourse, and there is increasing international recognition for and collaboration with the region’s artists and producers.

In this conference we will explore how the region’s comics address the Latin American city. As the world’s most urbanized region, Latin America offers a unique opportunity for thinking about how the popular cultural form of comics, which grew up with the modern metropolis, tackles the challenges posed by urban life characterized by inequality, social fragmentation, and precarious infrastructures.

We want to ask: how do artists use the comics form to address urban life? What different approaches to the city are evident in comics across the region? How has the representation of the city in comics changed over time? Is there something particular about the way that Latin American comics address urban life in comparison to comics from other parts of the globe? And, ultimately, can comics help us imagine and enable alternative urban futures?

Programme

Tuesday 25th June

0900-0930 Registration and coffee

0930-1000 Welcome James Scorer, University of Manchester

1000-1200 Panel 1 Borders and marginalities

Jasmin Wrobel, Freie Universität. “Na noite de São Paulo você esquece que o dia vai nascer": (Peripheric) visions of São Paulo in Brazilian graphic narratives

María Ximena Venturini, Tulane University. The Vampires From the Conurbano: La calambre by Ángel Mosquito

Hugo Hinojosa Lobos, Universidad Católica de Chile. Ciudad y marginalidad. 3 adaptaciones literarias en novelas gráficas chilenas.

Esther Claudio, UCLA. The land of femicides: Foreign graphic discourses on Ciudad Juárez

Pablo Turnes (Chair)

1300-1400 Lunch (provided)

1400-1530 Panel 2 Nations, traditions, histories

Carolina González Alvarado. Tecnológico de Monterrey. Writing history in the streets of Mexico City: a reinterpretation of the public space throughout Mexican graphic narratives

Carla Sagastegui Heredia, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Lima Power: The City of the Oppressors, The Oppressed Neighborhood

Pablo Guerra, Cohete Comics. Tracing as translation and invention: Bogotá in the comics of Adolfo Samper

Anne Magnussen (Chair)

1530-1600 Coffee and refreshments

1600-1700 Panel 3 Violence in the city

Daniel Willis. Lima de espaldas: Race, violence and limeño cityscapes in the comics of Juan Acevedo

Janek Scholz, Universität Wein. The City as a Chronotope in Marcello Quintanilha and Fábio Moon/Gabriel Bá

Ana Merino (Chair)

1930 Conference dinner

Wednesday 26th June 2019

0900-1100 Panel 4 Science fiction and dystopian cities

Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed, Daniel Aguilar-Rodríguez and Sergio Roncallo. Universidad Externado de Colombia. Colombian comics and dystopian representations of the city of Bogotá

Pablo Turnes, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata. The future has already past. Urban apocalypse, futurism and dystopia in contemporary Argentine comics.

Javiera Irribarren Ortiz, Columbia University. Techno-Eugenics and Futuristic Racism in BioCyberDrama Saga

Felipe Gómez. Carnegie Mellon University. Comics, Apocalypse, and the Latin American City: Ruins and Resistance

Dominic Davies (Chair)

1100-1130 Coffee

1130-1300 Panel 5 Form, narrative and production

Ana Merino, University of Iowa. Urban Textures as Narrative Landscapes in Different Formats: From the Vecindad to the Big Apple

Barbara Postema, Massey University. Love and the City: Fábio Moon’s wordless tales of Saõ Paulo

Enrique Uribe-Jongbloed, Universidad Externado de Colombia. The Colombian comics scene – Linking the city to its image, space and people

Andrea Aramburú (Chair)

1300-1400 Lunch (provided)

1400-1500 Panel 6

Rights, commons and belonging Andrea Aramburú, University of Cambridge. Relational Maps: Affect, Kinship and Relationality in Las ciudades que somos (2018)

Dominic Davies, City, University of London. Seeing Like A City: Vision, Visibility & Violence in André Diniz’s Picture a Favela (2012)

Ed King (chair)

1500-1630 Artists panel

André Diniz

Francisca Cárcamo Rojas

Helen Blejerman

Lea Hübner (Chair)

1630-1730 Coffee and Roundtable

1730 Close

Lunch and refreshments will be provided.