Mjög misjafnt, of oft sem underground comics eru bara eitthvað bull og innantóm sjálfsfróun skaparans en af og til koma fram snilldarverk sem einungis fá að njóta sín í underground heiminum.<br><br>
<a href="http://www.svanur.com“><img src=”http://www.simnet.is/hangar/svanursig.jpg"></a

The University of Florida's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and
the nascent Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, are
pleased to announce the 2003 UF Conference on Comics: Underground(s).
This second annual conference on the art and literature of sequential
pictorial narratives will be held in Gainesville, Florida, on
February 7th and 8th, 2003.

Participating artists for this year's conference will be Bill
Griffith, Kim Deitch, Diane Noomin, Art Spiegelman, and Robert
Williams.

During the 1960s a new chapter began in the historical development of
the comics medium, one whose visual and material progress is still
being written. The emergence of American Underground Comix, as an
aesthetic movement and as a radically new space for the production
and distribution of graphic narratives, changed almost every single
aspect of a mighty medium that at that point in time had largely been
reduced to producing genre material for adolescents. The underground
artists, freed from the editorial constraints of the mainstream, and
the work-for-hire contracts the commercial publishers utilized,
creatively expanded the visual vocabulary and narrative potential of
comics, to a degree not seen since the emergence of the newspaper
strips at the start of the twentieth century. Using humor, satire,
and parody, and with topics spanning from sex and drugs and rock and
roll, to social critique, to anti-war criticism, to feminist
critiques of the patriarchy, to challenges of dominant forms of
racism and homophobia, the undergrounds spawned a generation of
artists whose works (in solo publications and in anthologies) in the
college humor magazines, in the radical press, and ultimately in
comic book formats, renewed the power and popularity of this cultural
form. Political, social, sexual, and humorous, often all at the same
time, comics produced within the undergrounds of the 1960s and 1970s,
in America and in Europe, vibrate with a trenchant vitality and
visual virtuosity to this day.

This Conference will focus on the material history, contemporary
production, and critical reception of underground comics. Artists and
academic critics will explore what underground comix were, what
material and technological changes they created within the medium,
and what avenues of narrative and visual expression they opened up
for artists following in their wake. The Conference hopes to engage
with some of the critical and commercial issues these texts produced
within the medium of comics, as well as examine the relationship of
underground to other, more mainstream, forms of art and
entertainment. Particular topics and concerns may include, but not be
limited to:

*Language(s) of visual narrative in the Undergrounds
*Poetics, Semiotics, Play: theoretical approaches to Underground comics
*Left/Right/Center: Undergrounds as Journalism, Advocacy, or History
*Anthologies: Collaboration, Editorial Control, Thematic Unity *Great Books by Great Authors: ownership, copyright, and creator control *Gender, Sexuality, and Identity Formation in the undergrounds *Caricature, Critique, Dissent: The New Left and underground comix *Matter and Mode: textual production and distribution of the undergrounds *Collusion, Conflict, and Influence: the pre- and post-history of
Underground Comix

Papers that address the theme of the Conference are welcome, but
those relating to any aspect of the undergrounds, from any period or
country of origin, will also be considered for panels. Submitted
papers should be no longer than 2000 words or an approximate reading
time of 20 minutes. Abstracts of up to 250 words are requested for
inclusion in the conference program and the forthcoming Conference
web page. Publication-quality presentations may also be included in a
planned anthology. Deadline for submissions is the 15th of December,
2002. We require that you have abstracts submitted by this date in
order to give us time to review them and draft responses. Acceptance
notifications will be delivered no later than December 20th, 2002.
Submissions are acceptable by email (ronan@ufl.edu or ault@ufl.edu),
or by Postal Mail sent to

UF Comics Conference 2003: Underground(s)
Department of English
PO Box 117310
University of Florida
Gainesville, FL 32611-7310


The 2nd Annual Conference on Comics is sponsored by the nascent
Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere, the College of
Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida, along with
the UF Department of English.