CONFERENCE ORGANIZER
Organizing Committee. 80 Years and Beyond: A Virtual Symposium on Canadian Comics. Oct. 15-16, 2021. Call for Papers here.
Co-Chair (with Andrew O’Malley), Organizing Committee. COMICS/POLITICS. Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society. Ryerson University, Toronto. July 25-27, 2019. Final program here.
PRESENTATIONS
Comics Studies
‘Do You Want to Replace the Sky?’: Matt Huynh’s Interactive Comics and the Refugee Artist.” The Fifteenth Annual International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference: Comics and Technologies. University of East Anglia, Norwich, 10-12 July 2024
“The In-Between Spaces of the Migrant City in Fabien Toulmé’s Hakim’s Odyssey.” The International Comic Arts Forum (ICAF). University of British Columbia, Apr. 20-22, 2023.
Invited Speaker. "Towards a Hemispheric Black Comics Studies: Creolization, Surrealism, and the Comics of Stanley Wany." 2022-23 Sawyer Seminar: Racial Reckoning through Comics. Obermann Centre for Advanced Studies, University of Iowa. Feb. 9-11, 2023.
“Optics and Haptics: Interactive Online Refugee Comics Projects.” Comics and Conscience: Ethics, Morality, and Great Responsibility. The 2022 Joint Conference of the International Graphic Novel & Comics and the International Bande Dessinée Society. Lexicon Library and Cultural Centre, Dún Laoghaire, Ireland and Online. 29 June – 1 July 2022.
“Digital Humanitarianism, Border Imperialism, and Sea Prayer.” Border-Crossings and Human Rights in Graphic Narratives International Workshop. June 17-18, 2022. Virtual Conference hosted by the University of Cyprus.
“Canadian Covid Comics: Viral Diaries of Strange Times.” The 4th Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society: Re/Building Community. August 6-7, 2021. Virtual Conference.
Respondent. Crisis Lines: Coloniality, Modernity, Comics. City University of London. June 9, 2021. Virtual conference.
Invited Speaker. “The Canadian Comics Studies Publishing Roundtable.” Canadian Society for the Study of Comics Annual Conference. June 3-4, 2021. Virtual Conference
“Place and Pedagogy: Indigenous Comics in/and English.” Session Co-Organizer, “Refugee and Indigenous Comics: ‘Decolonizing’ the English Classroom.” English: Shared Futures. University of Manchester. June 26-28, 2020. [cancelled]
Roundtable Co-Organizer. “The Limits of Empathy: A Panel on Life Narratives, Migration, and Ethical Recognition.” XII IABA 2020 — Life-Writing: Imagining the Past, Present and Future. University of Turku. June 9-12, 2020. [cancelled]
“From Saigon to Suburbia: Clement Baloup’s Vietnamese Memories.” Comics, Migration, Minorities. School of History, Culture and Arts Studies at the University of Turku. June 3-5, 2020. [cancelled]
Keynote Speaker. "Arrivals and Departures: Migrant Comics in the Wake of Shaun Tan." Reading Shaun Tan in Hong Kong: Literature, Pedagogy and Community. One City One Book Hong Kong. Education University of Hong Kong. December 6-7, 2019. [cancelled]
“The Hand-Drawn Line and Postdocumentary Refugee Comics.” Panel Co-Organizer, “Bordered Forms, Bordered Worlds: Travelling with Refugee Comics.” Comics and Travel. Oxford Comics Network, University of Oxford, July 5, 2019.
“Childhood Play and Refugee Agency in Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi.” Panel Organizer, ““Vulnerability, Visiblity, and Childhood in War and Conflict Comics. Drawing Yourself In and Out of It. The 2nd International Amsterdam Comics Conference. Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, November 15-17, 2018.
“A Form to Come: Refugee Camps and Moving Comics.” MIND THE GAPS! The Futures of the Field. The 1st Annual Conference of the Comics Studies Society. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. August 9-11, 2018
"Spectral Lines, Luminous Lives: Lauren Redniss’s Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie, A Tale of Love and Fallout." Borders - Identity, Difference and Representation. The International Conference of Graphic Novels, Bandes Dessinées and Comics. University of Dundee. Jun. 26-30, 2017.
"Infrastructures of Trauma: Comics and the Right to Look at Migrant Detention Centres." Documenting Trauma: Comics and the Politics of Memory. A Symposium hosted by the TORCH Network, Comics and Graphic Novels: The Politics of Form. Oxford University. Jun. 22, 2017.
"Countervisual Tactics in Tings Chak’s Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention." Mikinaakominis/TransCanadas: Literature, Justice, Relation. University of Toronto. May 24-27, 2017..
"The Affective Topographies of Geneviève Castrée’s Graphic Life Narratives." Lives Outside the Lines: Gender and Genre in the Americas, A Symposium in Honour of Marlene Kadar. International Auto/Biography Association - Americas Conference. York University. May 15-17, 2017.
“We Were a Family of Separation”: The Domestic Effects and Political Locations of Geneviève Castrée’s Susceptible. Youngsters: On the Cultures of Children and Youth. Association for Research in Cultures of Young People. Oct. 23-25, 2016.
“Digital Comics, Graphic Affects." Maladies of the Soul, Emotion, Affect: Indigenous, Canadian, and Québécois Writings in the Crossfire of a New Turn. Banff Centre. Sep. 22-25, 2017.
“Framed Lives: Tings Chak’s Undocumented: The Architecture of Migrant Detention.” Excavating Lives: International Auto/Biography Association - WORLD. University of Cyprus. May 26-29, 2016.
"Jordan and the Giant: Graphic Biographies of Sports, Spectacle, and Trauma." Amsterdam Comics Conference: "Comics Interaction." University of Amsterdam. July 1-3, 2015.
“The Life in Revue: The Spectacular Archive of Vaudeville Visual Biographies” 1st Biennial Conference of IABA-Americas Chapter: Encounters Across the Americas: Archives, Technologies, Methods. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. June 4-7, 2015
"When Comics Meet Biography: Drawing the Lives of Others." 2015 Brown Bag Biography Talks. Center for Biographical Research, University of Hawai‘i at Mänoa. Feb. 19, 2015.
“Graphic Biography and the Half-Lives of Robert Oppenheimer.” International Association for Biography and Autobiography Conference. Banff Centre, Canada. May 29-Jun. 1, 2014.
“Graphic Nostalgia and Musical Modernity in Frank M. Young and David Lasky’s The Carter Family: Don’t Forget This Song.” Canadian Society for the Study of Comics/Société canadienne pour l'étude de la bande dessinée. Toronto. May 9-10, 2014.
“Memory and Black Visuality in Ho Che Anderson's King.” Languages and Cultures of Conflicts and Atrocities. Conference organized by the Languages and Cultures Circle of Manitoba and North Dakota (LCMND). University of Manitoba. Oct. 11-13, 2012.
“Irradiated Lives: Graphic Scientific Biographies and the Atomic Age.” Visual/Verbal Texts: A Symposium in Honour of Perry Nodelman. Invitedpresentation. University of Winnipeg. June 25-27, 2013.
“Lives in Little Boxes: The Unstable Subjects of Graphic Biography.” Conference Keynote Address. Trash Talking: An Interdisciplinary Student Conference on Popular Culture and Creative Writing. University of Regina. March 8, 2013.
“Spectacular Convergence: Ho Che Anderson, Martin Luther King, and the March on Washington.” New Narratives V. University of Toronto. May 4, 2012.
“Comics, Cardboard, and Canada: Seth’s George Sprott (1894-1975).” Canadian Literature Symposium: Material Cultures. University of Ottawa. May 6-8, 2011.
“A Stranger in a Strange Land? Guy Delisle Redraws the Travelogue” International Comic Arts Conference. Art Institute of Chicago. October 15-17, 2009.
“Beyond Borders, Within Borders: Guy Delisle as Graphic Witness.” Transplanting Canada: Inaugural Colloquium of the Canadian Literature Centre. University of Alberta. March 6-7, 2009.
Canadian Literature
“Design and Disappearance: Cultural Memory and the Company Town.” Association of Canadian and Quebec Literatures Annual Meeting. Congress 2012. Waterloo, ON. May 24-26, 2012.
“From Series to Cycle: The Gentrification of the Middlebrow in Canadian Literature.” Middlebrow Cultures. University of Strathclyde. July 14-15, 2009.
“Prosthetic Memory, Canadian Literature, and the Spanish Civil War.” Contested Spaces: Conflict, Counter-Narrative and Culture from Below in Canadian and Québécois Literatures. University of Sherbrooke, May 1-3, 2009.
“Reading and Writing for Boys: Laurie York Erskine, Renfrew of the Mounted, and the Solebury Method.” Society for the History of Authorship, Reading, and Publishing Annual Conference. Oxford Brookes University, UK. June 24-28, 2008.
“A Suave Scoundrel: Early Pulps, Popular Fiction, and Frank L. Packard.” Association of Canadian College and University Teachers (ACCUTE) Annual Conference. University of Saskatchewan. May 26-28, 2007.
“The Ex-Archive of Canadian Modernism.” Modernist Studies Association 8th Annual Conference. Tulsa, Oklahoma. Oct. 19-22, 2006
“The Serial Seductions of Renfrew of the Mounted.” Narrative: An International Conference. Carleton University. Apr. 6-9, 2006.
“Technologies of the Podium: Montreal Massacre Poetry and the Feminist Counterpublic.” Poetics and Public Culture: A Conference in Honour of Frank Davey. University of Western Ontario. Mar. 3-5, 2005
“Canadian Modernism’s Popular Front.” Other Modernisms/Modernism’s Others: Annual Conference of the Modernist Studies Association. Vancouver. Oct. 21-24, 2004.
“Modernism’s Red Stage.” The Canadian Modernists Meet. University of Ottawa. May 9-11, 2003.
“Social Work, Cultural Study: Documentary Practices Among the 1930s Literary Left.” Canadian Association of Cultural Studies (CACS) Inaugural Meeting. Hamilton. Jan. 31-Feb. 1, 2003.
“‘It’s Nice to be Remembered’: Sentimentality and the Forgetting of Edna Jaques.” Association of Canadian and Quebec Literatures Annual General Meeting. University of Toronto. May 26-28, 2002.
“Miriam Waddington, A.M. Klein, and the Modernist Tradition.” “Wider Boundaries of Daring”: The Modernist Impulse in Canadian Women’s Poetry. University of Windsor. Oct. 25-28, 2001.
“Movement and Modernity in Irene Baird’s Waste Heritage (1939).” Association of Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL) Annual General Meeting. Université Laval. May 24-27, 2001.
“Domesticity and Dissent: Literary Reworkings of the 1919 Winnipeg General Strike.” The Culture of Work. SUNY Binghamton. Mar. 21-24, 2000.