We’re excited to post the program for our upcoming conference, which we’re organizing together with Janina Wildfeuer and which will take place in Bremen in February. It’s a great lineup, featuring some cutting-edge research in what is a growing and increasingly diverse field, and we’re looking forward to meeting colleagues from across Europe and North America. We do have limited seating at the venue, however, so if you want to participate in the conference please get in touch with Svitlana Zarytska at zarytska@mail.upb.de to reserve a spot.
The Empirical Study of Comics
7-9 February 2017
Bremen University, Germany
Venue: Bremen University, Guesthouse Teerhof (Auf dem Teerhof 58, 28199 Bremen)
Tuesday, 7 February 2017:
09:30-10:00: Introductory Statement
10:00-12:00: Multimodal Analysis and Linguistics I
John Bateman (Bremen): From Creative Freedom to Empirical Studies via Qualitative Descriptions: Annotation Schemes for Comics and Graphic Novels
Christoph Wolf (Bremen): Culturally Motivated Layout Choices – A Comparative Study of Japanese Mangas and Western Comics
Pascal Lefèvre & Gert Meesters (Brussels/Lille): The Interpretation of an Evolving Line Drawing
12:00-13:30: Lunch Break
13:30-15:30: Multimodal Analysis and Linguistics II
Neil Cohn (Tilburg): Visual Language Theory and the Scientific Study of Comics
Chiao-I Tseng (Bremen): Tracking Character Developments and Events in Graphic Novels
Anna Lena Rodewald (Bremen): The Representation of Superhero(in)es in Comics
15:30-16:00: Coffee Break
16:00-17:30: Digital Approaches to Comics I
Bart Beaty (Calgary): What Were ‘Golden Age’ Comics: Formal Strategies at the Origin of the American Comic Book
Christophe Rigaud, Jean-Pierre Burie & Karell Bertet (La Rochelle): Computer Vision Applied to Comic Book Images
John Walsh, Shawn Martin & Jennifer St. Germain (Indiana): ‘Spins A Web Any Size’: Topic Modeling a Corpus of American Comic Book Fan Mail
19.30 Conference Dinner @ Ratskeller Bremen
Wednesday, 8 February 2017:
10:30-12:00: Digital Approaches to Comics II
Mihnea Tufis & Jean-Pierre Ganascia (Paris): Crowdsourcing Annotations for Comics Corpora
Alexander Dunst & Rita Hartel (Paderborn): From Canon to Corpus: The Quantitative Study of Graphic Narrative
12:00-13:30: Lunch Break
13:30-15:30: Cognitive Processing and Comprehension I
Ben Tatler (Aberdeen): Eye Movements and Image-Text Integration
Olli Philippe Lautenbacher, Kai Mikkonen & Maarit Koponen (Helsinki): Reading Comics – Tracking the Process
Hans-Jürgen Bucher (Trier): How Informative Are Information Comics? Results from Empirical Audience Research Including an Eyetracking Study
15:30-16:30: Poster Presentations
Sven Hohenstein & Jochen Laubrock (Potsdam): Temporal processing of visual narrative: The gutter and the reader’s attention
Linda Knief (Bremen): Text and Moving Images: Relations between Media
Oliver Moisich (Paderborn): Focalization in Comics as a Cognitive Concept
Julia Round & Paul Fisher Davies (Bournemouth/Sussex): Visual and Verbal Analysis of Misty
Marina Ruiz Tada & Olena Vasylets (Barcelona): The Role of the Reading Path for Learning from and the Perception of Manga
Janina Wildfeuer & Nancy Guo (Bremen): Exploring the Narrative Representation of Inset Panels in Comic Books
Francisco Veloso, Janina Wildfeuer, John Bateman & Felix Cheung (Bremen): An Empirical Investigation of the Semiotic Potential of Comic Book Page Layout: from the 1930s to 2010s.
16:30-18:30 Cognitive Processing and Comprehension II
Joe Magliano (Chicago): What Can Be Learned About the Psychology of Comics by Studying How We Process Adapted Narratives?
Lester Loschky (Kansas State): Understanding the Moment-to-Moment Processing of Sequential Narratives
Olivia Rohan & Ryoko Sasamoto (Dublin): Sound Effects in Japanese Comics: An Empirical Eyetracking Study in Multimodal Reading
Thursday, 9 February 2017:
10:00-12:00 Cognitive Processing and Comprehension III
Jochen Laubrock, Sven Hohenstein & Eike Richter (Potsdam): Cognitive Processing of Text and Image During Comics Reading
Tom Foulsham (Essex): Eye-Tracking, Comics, and the ‘Reading’ of a Scene
12:00-13.00 Concluding Remarks