You can look at the program here: http://www.inkersandthinkers.com
The keynote speaker was Bruce Mutard, who gave us the skinny on Australian comics past present and future, with as he said 'some good news and some bad news'. The below post-talk answer to a question from the audience fell I think into the latter category:
It was great to meet a bunch of new comics academics, including
and Annick Pellegrin (French digital comics), Aaron Humphrey (educational comics), Brigid Maher (Joe Sacco and the presence of the translator), Jeanne-Marie Viljoen, a philosopher, who looked at 'Waltz with Bashir'
and Can (pronounced 'John') T Yalcinkaya, a Turkish man living in Sydney who's organising an anthology book remembering the protesters in Istanbul in June/July 2013, and the violence used against them:
Also to hear from people I already know, like Bruce, David Blumenstein (the Squishface story), Amy Maynard (twitter and Australian comics), Enrique Del Ray Cabero (the Spanish comics story)
and Elizabeth MacFarlane, who spoke wonderfully about the process of making comics
My paper was called 'The Land is Alive: the animist effect in 'Blue' by Pat Grant and 'The Long Weekend in Alice Springs' by Josh Santospirito'. It was quite a difficult thing to write, and in the end more like the beginning of an investigation than the provider of any revelations, but it was great to have the opportunity to work on it and it present it to peers.
And in the evening, an Adelaide premiere screening of 'Graphic Novels! Melbourne!' so that finally friends Greg Gates, Brendan Boyd and Greg Holfeld, and other interested Adelaideans, could see it on the big screen!
Great stuff: may there be many more Inkers and Thinkers symposia!
Posts
