Romani Literary History and the Role of Comics and Graphic Narratives

Thursday, October 23
12:30 – 2 PM
BuTo 997, CENES Seminar Room & Online

Pizza will be served to in person attendees.

A Zoom link will be sent to virtual attendees closer to the event date to the email address provided during registration.

Register Here

Abstract

The talk will discuss graphic narrative production in the context of the historical developments of Romani literature, with examples from Eastern, Central, and Northern Europe. As with other forms of Romani literary production, various factors intersect in the creation of graphic narratives: (Romani) politics of individual states and pro-Romani organisations, national and regional trends in comics and graphic narrative production, and the individual agency of authors and creators.

Centred largely on Zahova’s concept of Romani publishing as an extension of Romani activisms and main communication platform for engaging with mainstream society, the talk explores motifs and narratives related to themes central to Romani identity and representation: the origins of the Romani people, individual and collective histories, and the Romani Holocaust. The primary material discussed consists not only of graphic novels in book format, but also a wide corpus of published materials, including comics in periodicals, translations, testimonies and oral history pieces, and online publications in which Roma are co-authors or co-creators.

Speaker Bio

Sofiya Zahova, PhD, is the director of the Vigdís International Centre for Multilingualism and Intercultural Understanding, a UNESCO Category 2 Centre at the University of Iceland. Her key academic fields are Romani Studies, Cultural Studies, and East European Studies. Sofiya’s interdisciplinary research has been focused on the interrelation between identity politics, writing, knowledge production, minority issues and community identity from historical and contemporary perspectives. These inquiries explore the experiences and perspectives of Romani people in the global context, minorities and ethnicity in the post-Yugoslav context, and Indigenous Peoples and minorities in the Nordic region. Currently, she leads the research projects RomIs: History and Ethnography of Roma in Iceland and Romani Educational Materials in a Nordic Context (NordEduRom).