Characters in Comics: Some Medium-Specific Qualities

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Dr Kai Mikkonen (University of Helsinki)
• Tuesday 20 June 2017, 17:00-18:30
• Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 8PQ, DMB, Room GS5.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Lucian Stephenson.

How do comics present characters? This talk will take a look at the means by which comics prompt their readers to ascribe traits and properties to their characters, and construe a sense of a person. In particular, the talk will focus on the main parameters of characterisation in comics with regard to the characters’ mimetic (realist) function, i.e. how characters can be perceived as plausible persons. The talk will also raise the question of medium-specificity regarding complexity in characters. Examples are drawn from a wide range of comics, including a Disney and a Punk aesthetic adaptation of Dante’s Inferno, and a number of it-narratives.

Kai Mikkonen is Senior Lecturer of Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and a life member of Clare Hall College, University of Cambridge. He earned his M.A. at the University of Iowa, USA , and Ph.D. at the University of Tampere, Finland. His main research and teaching interests include 19th and 20th century French and British literature, travel writing, graphic narratives and comics, multimodality and narrative theory.

This talk is part of the Pedagogy, Language, Arts & Culture in Education (PLACE) Group Seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Faculty of Education Seminars
• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cambridge Forum of Science and Humanities
• Cambridge Language Sciences
• Cambridge talks
• Centre for Research in Children's Literature at Cambridge
• Chris Davis' list
• FERSA - All Events
• Faculty of Education Seminars
• Faculty of Education, 184 Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 8PQ, DMB, Room GS5
• Featured lists
• Guy Emerson's list
• Pedagogy, Language, Arts & Culture in Education (PLACE) Group Seminars

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.