*CFP*
*A special issue of/ ImageTexT/*
*North Korean Comics & Animation*
*Editors: Heinz Insu Fenkl & Stephanie Boluk*
*
*
This is an important and timely special issue of /ImageTexT/,
particularly given the current political and economic conditions in the
DPRK. With North Korea increasingly in the international spotlight and
with news of the imminent opening of Kaesong, a major industrial zone
designated for international trade, it is an important time to examine
the cultural production of the DPRK. Comics and animation, particularly
when aimed at young readers, offer a more transparent surface than
cultural production aimed at adults. Pedagogical and ideological content
tend to be rather explicit, especially when a text is used for
propaganda, but these same texts offer insight into culture, history,
aesthetics, and worldview. Similarly, the reception of North Korean
texts by those living outside the country functions to shed light on our
own subject position as much as it provides insight into the North
Korean cultural imaginary.
With the Japanese manga and anime style having become the dominant
aesthetic mode in much of East Asia, it is valuable to look at the
aesthetic approaches of a country that has existed in a relative
self-imposed isolation for the past half century. North Korea has
developed a language of comics and animation that is visually distinct
and stands, both ideologically and aesthetically, apart from the work
produced by the other major cultural centers of East Asia.
For this special issue of /ImageTexT/ we are looking for essays on
topics such as adaptation, translation, pedagogy, politics, aesthetics,
appropriation, and inter-cultural exchange. We are interested in close
readings, comparisons, deconstructions, and contextualizations. We
welcome essays from a variety of approaches from the historical to
rhetorical analyses of the semiotic codes deployed in North Korean
popular visual culture.
/ImageTexT/ is an ideal venue for scholarship on visual media because it
is the premier online scholarly journals on comics. Since it is not
limited by the economics of print media, there are few limitations on
the images and animation clips that can be included to illustrate
essays. Since this will be a first encounter with the DPRK’s comics and
animation production for most readers, we plan to include a generous
number of images and clips. We are also seeking to turn the contents of
the special issue into a book collection.
A concise 250-word description of your paper should be sent
to <a
href=”mailto:fenkli@newpaltz.edu”>fenkli@newpaltz.edu and <a
href=”mailto:sboluk@ufl.edu”>sboluk@ufl.edu
by July 1, 2010.
The main page of /ImageTexT/ can be found
here: http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/
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