PopCC Director Biz Nijdam Invited to Speak at 2025 Comics Studies Society Conference

Pop Culture Cluster Director Dr. Biz Nijdam has been invited to speak at the Graduate Student Caucus’ 10 Year Anniversary Roundtable to be held during the upcoming Comics Studies Society Conference. Read below for more on the conference and the Call for Papers!

This is a call for papers for the 2025 Annual Conference of the Comic Studies Society. The Call reads: "Since the turn of the century, comics have considered the contested nature of American identity. Comic strips, comic books, and editorial cartoons featured stereotypes and caricatures that contributed to non-white people’s marginalization in the United States and advanced narratives of U.S. exceptionalism. The weight of this visual history often obscures the moments when artists, writers, and publishers fought against the regressive imaginary and offered something new. From the dynamic imagination of African American cartoonists such as Jay Jackson’s Bungleton Green in the 1940s to contemporary comic innovators such as C. Spike Trotman’s Iron Circus Comics, the urge to create diverse comics has a long legacy. Given this history, we celebrate the resistance, resilience, and resolution demonstrated in the comic medium. As we approach the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, it’s a time to reflect on the progress made and the work that still lies ahead. We recognize that the revolution will be drawn and celebrate the artists, scholars, and communities that embrace the comic medium to do so. We celebrate an expanding literature in comic studies that highlights how those groups, often framed at the margin, have moved to the center of the cultural conversation. This is achieved not only through the celebration of characters that reflect them but also by seizing the imagined affordance of the comic form to elevate, transform, and inspire new conversation. Building on the dynamic comic scholarship that recognizes how readers leveraged the imagined affordance of the comic page to create new worlds and challenge old paradigms. We invite comics scholars from around the world to submit proposals for the 8th annual Comics Studies Society that engage in topics pertaining to the transformative potential of comics. Some possible topics: Graphic representations of social justice movements Biography, liberation, and comics Contemporary African-American cartoonists Contemporary webcomics and identity Fandoms and identity Transmedia storytelling Satire and political cartooning Afrofuturism in legacy and new media texts Recovering lost voices (Re-)narrating the past Comics production and community The social and political work of comics Comics and/as community Transnational comics production Comics journalism and protest Comics engaged with ongoing conflicts in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, DRC, and Nicaragua Comics engaging with the history and legacy of ethnic violence Hidden legacies of transnational creators Site-specific readings of comic texts" The keynote artist is Ho Che Anderson The keynote Scholar is TreaAndrea Russworm

The 2025 CSS Conference “Resistant, Resilient, and Resolute: Social Justice and Comics” will take place Thursday, July 10, 2025 – Saturday, July 12, 2025 at Michigan State University. The conference will focus on the ways in which “Since the turn of the century, comics have considered the contested nature of American identity.”

Alongside other former and current members of the Graduate Student Caucus (GSC) of the Comics Studies Society (CSS), Dr. Nijdam will reflect on her time as President of GSC, the work of the GSC in supporting and mentoring graduate students researching comics and graphic novels, and how the academic field of comics studies has changed in the last decade.

To learn more about the conference and how to watch the Graduate Student Caucus’ 10 Year Anniversary Roundtable, you can visit the GSC conference page.