Program – International conference Comics and the Politics of Looking. Gender, Representation, and the Transnational Gaze

Ghent, 18-19 September 2025

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Day 1: Intermedial Gazes and Practices of Adaptation

9:30-10:00 Coffee and welcome

Organising Committee (Ghent University): Manuela Di Franco, Maaheen Ahmed and Giorgio Busi Rizzi

10:00-11:30 Panel 1: Gazing Across Media – Comics, Film, and the Moving Image

Chair: TBA

  • Miriam Kent (University of Leeds) – Remediating the Gaze: Comics, Film and Interdisciplinary Practice-as-Research
  • Yasco Horsman (Universiteit Leiden) – Gaze and Suture in Comics and Cinema: Revisiting Maroh vs Kechiche
  • Giorgio Busi Rizzi (Ghent University) and Manuela Di Franco (Ghent University/Trinity College Dublin)Operationalising the Male Gaze in Dylan Dog

11:30-11:45 Coffee break 

11:45-12:45 Panel 2: Queer Gazes and Feminist Re-visions

Chair: TBA

  • Cassia Hayward-Fitch (University of East Anglia) – From the Male Gaze to the Female Gays: Universalizing Lesbian Experiences in Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For
  • Sébastien Conard (LUCA School of Arts) and Margot De Grave Loyson (LUCA School of Arts) – Framing Traces, Tracing Frames: A Feminist Methodological Approach to Drawing as Remembering in Graphic Storytelling

12:45–13:45 Lunch

13:45–14:45 Panel 3: The Gaze in Manga

Chair: TBA

  • Asuka Ozumi (University of Turin) – Shifting gazes and gender representation in Torikai Akane
  • Sarah Darley (University of East Anglia) – It’s in their DNA . . . Or Not: Poetics of Bodily Transformation in Mia Ikumi and Reiko Yoshida’s Tokyo Mew Mew (2000–3) and 4Kids Entertainment’s Localised Mew Mew Power (2005)

14:45-15:00 Coffee break

15:00–17:00 Drawing and writing Workshop

Dragana Radanović (KU Leuven) and Poorva Goel

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Day 2: National Histories, Translations, and Storytelling

10:00–11:30 Panel 4: National Histories and the Visual Storyteller

Chair: TBA

  • Lorenzo Di Paola (ULB) – Playing with the Other: Race, Spectacle and Visual Pedagogy in BilBolBul and I tre Cinesini (Corriere dei Piccoli, 1908–1909)
  • Sabrina Aragao (Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina/Université de Lille) – Translating Otherness: An Analysis of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis
  • Felipe Muhr (Ghent University/KU Leuven) – Caniff’s Confidential: Drawing Women from Milton Caniff’s Picture Reference Files

11:30-11:45 Coffee break 

11:00-12:30 Roundtable: Interrogating the Politics of Looking through the Drawn Line

Poorva Goel, Gabri Molist (LUCA School of Arts), Dragana Radanovic (KU Leuven) and Mathilde Van Gheluwe (école de recherche graphique)

13:00-14:00 Lunch Break – Closing remarks

15:00 Visit to the Comics Museum & drinks at Wolf Sharing Food Market in Brussels (optional)