King's College London Speculations - 23rd March, 6pm

On the 23rd March I'll be a giving a talk as part of King's College London's new series of talks "Speculations". To be held at 6pm at K6.63 King's Building, Strand Campus, King's College London

My talk is entitled Blurred Lines: Interplay between Biography and the Fantastic in the Graphic Memoir

Comic books represent a narrative medium which fuses visual information with text in a manner very likely unique, certainly amongst commercial markets in the West. Perhaps because of their pulpish origins, and their recent history of writing themselves into literary respectability, comics and graphic novels have an unquestioned ease of association with speculative fiction and the fantastic. This presentation will examine a subset of texts which exploit this association by blending elements of the fantastic with the non-fiction of graphic memoir. These fictive breaks within otherwise realist narratives challenge traditional notions of biography and memoir and their necessary adherence to mimetic representation.

As such, these blurred narratives become especially useful when discussing experiences which challenge the limits of communicative narrative: trauma and ill mental health, as such this examination of fictive incursions will use examples from Steven Seagle’s It’s A Bird, Katie Green’s Lighter Than My Shadow and Paul Dini’s Dark Night, amongst others.

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The talk is free to attend so if you're in the area please do come along.

I was invited to present my paper by the series organiser Sinéad Murphy.

The facebook event for the talk is here.

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'Speculations' engages in current research in speculative and science fiction, but with a particular interest in intersections across a spectrum of disciplines which engage in varieties of speculative thought.

'Speculations' is supported by the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King's College London.

A Little Woo Hoo

Had a little woo hoo moment recently.1 Whilst reading Caroline Wiedmer's examination of The Claims of Memory: Representations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Germany and France (which is so far excellent), I came across the first usage of the word "mimetic" in relation to Second World War historical fiction. This is significant because since choosing to define my study as being of non-mimetic fictions I've read lots of material which I'll certainly be able to use but none which  uses my terminology. Wiedmer's has hopefully broken the drought and I shall now be inundated with uses of mimetic, or better yet non-mimetic.

Better still, she uses it in relation to Art Spiegelman's Maus which I recently finished reading for the Graphic Novel book club I run and not only greatly enjoyed but also plan on using in my own study.

That's it really, not exactly a major breakthrough (hence not a Eureka! moment), but a brief moment when I looked up from my research and smiled a little as another piece of the jigsaw fell into place. Just thought I'd share that with you, as its been a bit dry in my blog-posting-world. Thanks.


1 Yes, having played The Sims I know that has a different connotation to the way I mean it - I don't care.

Classics and Comics

Although, I did today finally start reading The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories edited by Ian Watson and Ian Whates, the majority of my evening post-work was spent on one of my subsidiary projects. A good friend of mine, Mr. David Smith [Smiff], has asked me to co-author a paper with him on Classical influences in comic books. Given that the field of comic books, Graphic Novels, whatever you want to call them, has long been something I've wanted to get into, I leaped at the chance.

Abstracts have to be in by the end of the week so I've been throwing together as many Ancient Greek references and allusions in comics that I can gather. The obvious ones such as Frank Miller's 300 and the DC Character Wonder Woman are there, but so too are more recent up and comers like Greek Street. I'm looking forward to working on the paper, which Smiff will present, and we're hoping to either get it published or continue to work on it for use at future events.

All in all a productive day, but very little actual Ph.D work done. Tomorrow I'll be travelling home to North Wales which means a train journey which should mean I can get through the first few stories in Watson and Whates's anthology. Fingers crossed.

P.S. Annoyingly a book exists on the very topic we're writing a paper on but isn't published until early 2011, our conference is in December. If anyone can find me an advance copy or better yet a time machine so I can travel into the future and buy a copy then please do get in touch.

UPDATE:  Due to scheduling conflicts, the writing and subsequent presentation of this paper has been postponed until a future date. It, or something like it, may well be written in the not too distant future, but you'll have to wait and see to find out where and when. [Updated 13.10.10]