Ladies Making Comics

Coming up this weekend is the 10th Annual University of Florida Conference on Comics, the theme of which this year is “A Comic of Her Own”. It’s goal is:

…to facilitate this dialog and foster the scholarly exploration of intersections between women’s writing in comics, women represented in comics, and the women who read them.

In other words, everything I care about in life, and I wish I could be there! Keynote speakers include Trina Robbins (of course), Leela Corman, and Megan Kelso.

The program details a number of tantalizing panel topics, ranging from the use of comics for women’s autobiographies to exploring sexual and racial identities of both real and fictional women, from women’s place in the world of webcomics to historical movements and contexts for women’s comics.

One panel of particular interest is Carolynn Calabrese’s defense of Moto Hagio’s The Heart of Thomas. She noted, as I did, that several male reviewers spent more time critiquing the femininity of the work and the tropes of the genres (genres it defined for the coming generations) without analyzing it in its historical context. Carolynn has informed me that one of the critics whose reviews she and I took issue with has agreed to run her critique after the conference, so watch this space for updates!

If you can make it to Gainesville, Florida this weekend, why not check it out? And report back!