The first Optika symposium, which took place in 2005, brought together
people from a variety of artistic, intellectual, and cultural
backgrounds and resulted in a wonderfully stimulating 2 day
conversation about the possibilities of visual narration. It also
resulted in a book on the subject soon to be published by the
University of Puerto Rico Press. When the symposium ended, everyone was
asking when Optika 2 would take place. So we are happy to announce the
second edition of Optika, and invite you to submit your proposals:

Optika 2
A Symposium on Visual Narration
University of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez Campus

Thursday and Friday January 25th and 26th, 2007

Organizers: Mary Leonard, Laura Bravo

Optika is a two-day symposium which will explore the theory and
practice of visual narrative. Academics, independent scholars,
students, and artists are invited to participate. Both academic and
creative work are welcome and may be submitted in either English or
Spanish. The organizers are interested in a variety of critical and
theoretical perspectives which contribute to our understanding of the
many ways we might conceive of visual narration. We are also
interested in formal diversity. Thus papers or creative work may engage
with the visual in defined genres, or in less-studied hybrid or
emerging forms. Forms and genres include film, television, music
videos, theater, opera, performance art, installations, painting,
sculpture, photography, commercials, billboards, comics, cartoons,
graphic novels, graffiti, digital and internet forms. Selected work
will be published in the symposium proceedings.

Academic submissions are by abstract and should be accompanied by a
biography of not more than 3 sentences. Abstracts should be no longer
than 300 words long. Papers should be no more than twenty minutes long.

Creative work is by proposal (300 word maximum), and should be
accompanied by a biography of the artist no longer than 3 sentences and
a visual representation of the proposed work. Presentations or
projections may last from 1 to 10 minutes. In the case of photographs,
paintings, sculpture, and other static forms, the artist should submit
a narrative piece composed of up to 10 individual elements (e.g., a
narrative composed of 10 photographs). Submissions which include more
than ten elements may be accepted if the artist convincingly justifies
the need for the inclusion of all the elements proposed.

The organizers seek to include a wide variety of artistic forms and
approaches to visual narration and will give preference to submissions
which will provoke the spectator to reflect upon, question or rethink
the ways in which stories can be visually constructed.

Deadline for submissions: Sunday, September 10, 2006

Send submissions to: Mary Leonard
                                                English Department
                                                323 Chardon Building
                                                University of Puerto Rico
                                                Mayagüez Campus
                                                Mayagüez, Puerto Rico 00681

                e-mail: mleonard_at_choicecable.net

         ==========================================================
              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 Sun Jul 09 2006 - 09:30:51 EDT