Berlin: Cityscapes and Urban Stories in Comics and Graphic Novels (PAMLA 2020)

118th Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association Annual Conference, Las Vegas (Thursday, November 12 to Sunday, November 15, 2020) 

This panel invites contributions on comics that depict the many facets of Berlin and portray the metropolis as the backdrop of urban stories. In line with this year’s PAMLA special theme, this panel welcomes inquiry on works that foreground Berlin as the space of beliefs, hopes, doubts, memories, and changes. Papers can focus on a specific theme as well as on the affordances of the comics medium in shaping the urban imagination of Berlin. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, Berlin as the center of: cultural memories (Jason Lutes’s Berlin); urban legends and myths (Reinhard Kleist’s Berliner Mythen); political conflicts and encounters (Susanne Buddenberg and Thomas Henseler’s Berlin: A City Divided); departure and arrival of migrants and refugees (Ali Fitzgerald’s Drawn to Berlin); dark events (Reinhard Kleist and Tobias O. Meissner’s Berlinoir); and social reportages (Ulli Lust’s Fashionvictims, Trendverächter).

Deadline for submission: July 15, 2020

To submit an abstract, you will first need to Create a User Account. When you create your account, you'll be able to choose one of the many affiliations we have on file, or if your affiliation isn't available, choose "Not Listed" and then type your affiliation in.

Please send any inquiry to Olivia Albiero, San Francisco State University (albiero@sfsu.edu)