TRANSITUS:
Illustration as Crossing Ground 

The 12th International Illustration Research Symposium

Falmouth University, Cornwall, UK, July 14-17, 2022

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Illustration comprises a crossing ground between word and meaning, between image and reality, between past, present and future moments. Inherent but often unspoken is the movement of the illustrative line, of the sequence from one moment transitioning to the next, of the translations across cultures and across media.  Is illustration necessarily transitive? Is the illustrator a mediator, transiting and translating between entities? What illustrative formats can move across cultural, temporal, national, and geographical boundaries and borders? How can we illustrate trans identities, gendered and otherwise? What are the forces that compel these crossings? What are the kinds of transitional passages which call for illustrated narratives, and what are the movements which carry readers from one page to the next in order to tell a particular story? This conference explores the notion of “Transitus” as an approach to thinking about “trans-” as prefix, about “trans” as crossing ground, and, most relevantly, about “trans” as a modality of illustration itself. 

 

We invite paper, panel, and workshop proposals on relevant topics, including but not limited to the following:

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  • Transmedia, adaptation, and franchise approaches to illustration

  • Transit and its relation to public forums for illustration

  • Trans-identity formations and performative illustration

  • Trans-embodiment, trans-substantiation, and other corporeal crossings

  • Trans-Atlantic crossings and attendant illustrative practices

  • Transitions and their status in sequential narrative

  • Trans-species/multi-species/interspecies character design in contemporary illustrative media

  • Translucency: light and the image in screen-based illustration

  • Transgressive illustration and its tropes  

  • Transitions and folds: Pop-ups and other feats of paper engineering

  • Transcultural visual exchanges

  • Transcendental and transcendent practices of illustration

  • Transformative world-building

  • Transcription and Reportage

  • Transitions: Coming-of-age stories, the Young Adult Marketplace, and GenZ expressions

  • Transplacental exchanges and the imaging of the maternal

 

Please send Abstract proposals of 300 words by February 18, 2022 to:  Transitus.conference@falmouth.ac.uk