Category Archives: Humanities and Social Sciences

TRANSITIONS 4 COMICA SYMPOSIUM

Saturday October 26 saw the return of the annual Transitions Comica Symposium to Birkbeck. The symposium provides a space to promote emerging multi-disciplinary research in the field of comics studies, whether defined as comics, comix, graphic novels, manga, bande dessinée, or any other form of sequential art. This is the fourth time the College has hosted the event, which has rapidly become a major event in the burgeoning field of comics studies. The symposium is run in conjunction with Comica, the London International Comics Festival, organised by the inestimable Paul Gravett. Transitions 4 was organised by me (Tony Venezia), Hallvard Haug (Birkbeck), and Nina Mickwitz (UEA), with the support of Birkbeck’s Centre for Contemporary Literature. This year we had two informative keynote speeches; from Dr. Ann Miller (Leicester), on issues of translating French comics criticism and theory, and Dr. Paul Williams (Exeter), on the possible applications of Franco Moretti’s ‘distant reading’ for comics studies.

We ran parallel sessions throughout the day, with presentations from PhD students, early career lecturers, and graphic artists. This was the largest Transitions yet, with nearly one hundred delegates and speakers in attendance from around the country and abroad, including a special deputation from Singapore. This gave the conference a pleasing international flavour.

Special thanks to Joe Brooker, Carol Watts, Catherine Catrix, Roger Sabin, Ernesto Priego and everyone at The Comics Grid, and John Miers.

With the continuing support of the Centre for Contemporary Literature and Dr. Roger Sabin we hope to stage Transitions 5 next year. Watch this space…

Below are some comments from this year’s participants which sum up what a great day it was.

Tony Venezia

‘Transitions 4 was the biggest and most well-attended yet, with a refreshingly international feel. It was good to see bandes desinées, manga, and Singaporean manhwa all discussed in the same place, when the tendency is for these traditions to be dealt with in discrete conferences. The keynotes from Ann Miller and Paul Williams were of a very high quality, and, as ever, the audience discussion at the end was lively and thought-provoking, especially on the issue of how academic disciplines find it hard to deal with the topic of narrative drawing. Despite the challenging economic climate for the Humanities, comics scholarship is in a very healthy place – and Transitions is the proof. ‘

(Dr. Roger Sabin, Reader in Popular Culture at Central Saint Martins. Respondent for all of the Transitions symposia.)

‘It was a pleasure to present at Transitions this year and to be a part of the growing research interests in domestic and international comics. The symposium really highlighted the importance of interdisciplinary approaches, which was also represented by the wonderful diversity of presenters and delegates who attended.’

(Tara-Monique Etherington, PhD. Student, University of Exeter. First-time speaker.)

‘I’ve never been to transitions before – it was interesting to go to conference outside my usual field and community of practice. The best part of it was talking to others working on similar projects.’

(Muna Al-Jawad, consultant Geriatrician at the Royal Sussex County Hospital, and practice-based doctoral researcher in Medical Humanities at Birkbeck. First-time speaker.)

‘Transitions proved to be an engaging forum for learning about a diverse range of comics, as well as offering the chance to reflect on the place of comics in academic culture. Though I’ve been writing on the Gothic for some years, comics studies is still fairly new to me and this was a really stimulating and supportive environment in which to give a paper. It was a great day – very well-attended – with a really fascinating diversity of presentations.’

(Rebecca Janicker, PhD. Student, University of Portsmouth. First-time speaker at Transitions)

‘There was so much going on in terms of stimulating papers and discussion, not to mention the informal meeting of new people from what seems to be a very friendly and supportive comics studies community.’

(Michael Connerty, teaches courses on animation history and comics at the Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design and Technology in Dublin. First-time speaker)

‘This was my first time attending a conference as a speaker, and was truly a boost of inspiration – I gained new insights in the field as well as made new acquaintances with a shared interest in political cartoons that I will stay in touch with and discuss further research.’

(Rebecka Klette, studying BA History of Ideas at the University of Lund. Coming to Birkbeck to study for a MA in the subject in 2014. First-time speaker.)

‘A truly international symposium. I have learned much from the debates and exchanges at Transitions 4.’

(Lim Cheng Tju, Singapore editor for the International Journal of Comic Art and co-editor of Liquid City Volume 2 (Image Comics, 2010); postgraduate student at Institute of Education, University of London, 2013-14. First-time speaker.)

‘I have enjoyed experiencing the development of Transitions from a modest platform for UK-based emerging comics scholars to a busy annual gathering of a diverse range of inter-disciplinary academics and practitioners linked by comics.’

(Nicola Streeten, graphic artist and PhD student at University of Brighton. Nicola presented at the first Transitions and has chaired panels at the last two.)

le Carré’s People

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A fiftieth anniversary symposium on The Spy Who Came in From the Cold was held on 7 September 2013, at the Barbican. This post was contributed by Janice Morphet, UCL.

The fiftieth anniversary of the publication of John le Carré’s The Spy Who Came in From the Cold has been celebrated in a number of ways. Penguin Books have published a special edition, which replicates the original cover design and concludes with archival material on the novel and its subsequent film adaptation. Le Carré also wrote an afterword for this special edition and has been giving media and book festival interviews. Much of this insight has focused on the sometimes variable recollections of the author, the writing process and his own psychological state at that time.

In contrast to these events, Birkbeck’s Centre for Contemporary Literature, supported by Penguin Books, held a symposium on the contemporary cultural context within which The Spy was written and published. The series of talks and the associated discussion told of life in the late 1950s and early 1960s that was essentially wider than the inevitably personal memories of the author.

The Spy was a novel that captured its moment, creating the iconography of the Cold War. Like Harry Palmer in The Ipcress File, Alec Leamas is an anti-hero who, despite his lack of deference, still supports his country even after Suez and its diminishing influence through Empire. Whilst much is made of its dull settings in Bayswater and East Berlin reflecting this new bleak reality, The Spy also has lyrical passages about the joys of London parks and the freedom to walk its streets akin to those in Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners (1956), another Bayswater novel written by another outsider. This is what Leamas longs for in his prison cell in Wormwood Scrubs.

Although it was a turning point towards a new realism in showing the Cold War’s spread from Eastern Europe to the streets of London, The Spy had a long line of antecedents. Toby Manning reminded us how the warnings in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four provided a justification for active espionage. Matthew Wraith argued that le Carré used the language of David Trotter’s ‘paranoid modernism’ by repurposing Eliot’s image of a ‘wilderness of mirrors’. And Bianca Leggett demonstrated the ways in which Graham Greene defined the characteristics of Englishness and its ethical code in his spy fiction, which le Carré admired.

The external nature of this new Cold War was also captured in the changing relationships with former allies. The USSR was now an enemy and the US was taking a rather less positive view of the ‘special relationship’ in the post-Churchill era, as pointed out by Jennifer Glennon.

At the same time as this external context was becoming more threatening, domestic culture was changing. Steven Morrison reminded us of Peter Hennessy’s view that the Cold War was a not a people’s war. Increases in television viewing created both a common culture and an internalised viewing experience. This is recalled in the fiftieth anniversary of Harold Wilson’s ‘white heat of technology’ speech, also in 2013. External threats could be more effectively realised in the safety of the family sitting room. Tom May’s paper told of the emergence of hard-hitting social realist television plays. They created a context in which, in the 1970s, television adaptations of le Carré’s work emerged as an iconic feature of British popular culture.

Although The Spy is now being celebrated as a book, it is more remembered as a film that captured post-war Britain’s view of the Cold War and the lengths to which the state went to protect its information sources and agents. Whilst Fleming’s James Bond narratives were focused on whether the hero would escape, in le Carré’s fiction the country’s survival was uppermost. Adam Sisman, le Carré’s official biographer, reflected on those involved in translating these stories from book to film.
Whilst some worked on both the Bond and the le Carré franchises, those franchises’ respective successes were rooted in their differences.

Thus, in providing an appreciation of the social and cultural context of the publication of The Spy, the symposium reminded us why it became an iconic novel rather than just another airport paperback, and why it will continue to be discussed in the next fifty years.