Since the editors' semester schedules are hectic enough that we are
not going to get to submissions until summer anyway, we have extended
the deadline for this issue until June.

Call for Papers
The Comics Work of Neil Gaiman
A special issue of ImageTexT

ImageTexT is pleased to announce an upcoming special issue on the
work of Neil Gaiman. ImageTexT is a web-based journal published by
the University of Florida, committed to advancing the academic
study of comic books, comic strips, and animated cartoons. Under
the guidance of an editorial board of scholars from a variety of
disciplines, ImageTexT publishes solicited and peer-reviewed
papers that investigate the material, historical, theoretical, and
cultural implications of visual textuality. ImageTexT welcomes
essays emphasizing (but not limited to) the aesthetics, cognition,
production, reception, distribution and dissemination of comics
and other media as they relate to comics, along with translations
of previously existing research on comics as dimensions of visual
culture.

For this issue, we are particularly interested in papers that help
move beyond the core of well-rehearsed cliches that make up
scholarship on Gaiman. Innovative and inventive approaches to the
subject matter are greatly preferred to retracing the role of the
mythic and Joseph Campbell in Sandman, or discussing Dream in terms
of Freud. Being a comics-centered journal, we are most interested in
treatments of
Gaiman's work in comics, although we use the term in the broadest
sense, including Stardust and his children's picture books, and
will certainly welcome treatments of Gaiman's non-comics work
alongside his comics work.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

* The portrayal of stories and art in the work of Gaiman as
contrasted with his British contemporaries (Moore, Morrison, etc)
* Gaiman and his collaborators (especially Dave McKean): research
on their subject status, influence and any tensions they bring to
"his" work, including issues of the auteur, polyvocality and
seriality.
* Sandman's relationship to different readerships, including how
the books are viewed by the goth/punk community (also:
relationship to music), academics, fantasy authors and readers,
and the series' peculiar relationship to mainstream comics (also:
consideration of superheroes and the superheroic in Gaiman's
work).
* Comics and (non-)illustrated Texts: theoretical approaches to,
issues and effects of Gaiman's writing moving between these
contexts.
* Gaiman's conception of superheroes, as well as the ambiguous
role of superheroes in Sandman
* The role of British history, culture and education in Gaiman's
work and/or that of the American immigrant, including
considerations of him alongside non-immigrant British comics
writers and in the context of immigrant and postcolonial writing
and authors.
* The role of theology and the sacred, secular and profane in
Gaiman's work, particularly that of Judeo-Christian divinity
relative to the profusion of finite divinity.
* Children and childhood in "children's" and "adult" stories by
Gaiman, including issues of children's literature, bildungstromen,
narratology, psychology and memory.

Texts that we would be specifically interested in papers dealing
with include:

* Sandman (Including Dream Hunters, Endless Nights, and the Death
miniseries)
* Violent Cases and Mr. Punch
* Signal to Noise
* The Vertigo Tarot
* The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish and The Wolves in the
Walls
* Mirrormask
* Black Orchid
* 1602
* Superman and Green Lantern: Legends of the Green Flame
* Gaiman's work on Spawn
* Marvelman/Miracleman
* Books of Magic
* Harlequin Valentine
* Creatures of the Night
* Murder Mysteries
* The Last Temptation
* Stardust
* Princess Mononoke
* A Short Film About John Bolton
* Any of Gaiman's short comics works or uncollected runs on
titles

Please send completed papers in MLA citation format as attachments
to sandifer_at_english.ufl.edu by June 1, 2006. For more information
on ImageTexT, please visit http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/.

         ==========================================================
              From the Literary Calls for Papers Mailing List
                        CFP_at_english.upenn.edu
                         Full Information at
                     http://cfp.english.upenn.edu
         or write Jennifer Higginbotham: higginbj_at_english.upenn.edu
         ==========================================================
Received on Thu Mar 02 2006 - 11:44:44 EST