A cycle by Elisa McCausland and Diego Salgado for the Círculo de Bellas Artes de Madrid

October 17, 24 and 31 – November 7, 14 and 21 (Tuesdays, 18:00 p.m. to 20:00 p.m.)

We are at a historic moment for comics. The medium has transcended its status as an expressive artifact to become a lingua franca of journalism, professions, essay writing, audiovisual media, and many other manifestations of our contemporary world.

This series of lectures aims to (re)contextualize comics in an informative way, so that long-time fans, newcomers, and those who were previously unfamiliar with the medium have the tools to appreciate it and relate it to the defining paradigms of our time.

To that end, the sessions will discuss the intersections of comics with pop culture, communication, and the philosophical and activist discourses that shape our world. As theorist Ana Merino has written, “comics reflect the reality of their time and help us reflect on ourselves (…) Comics are a necessary space for shared thought.”

Session I: The expressive medium and its tools.

We all know what a comic is, but what are the reasons behind its secret success? We'll decipher its language, its creative processes, and the reason for its genres and formats in an introductory session where everything you thought you knew about the medium will be subjected to a thorough review.

Session II: Comics, thought and a sense of wonder.

Why is it that since the birth of comics, generation after generation has found refuge in reading them? The transparency in the uses and customs of comics hides a fascinating capacity to promote our sense of wonderescapism to other worlds, and to simultaneously illuminate discourses with a profound effect on our experience of reality. “I believe in the transformative power of comics” (Kate Beaton).

Session III: Authorship and industry.

Debates like the one that took place for several years surrounding the graphic novel reveal a clear tension between understanding comics as a mass medium and as a medium for the author's uncompromising expression. In this session, we will review historical and contemporary examples that will help us understand that things are not so simple; between these two extremes, we find a wide spectrum of gray areas where, in fact, the most interesting works reside.

Session IV: Comics, visual arts and audiovisual media.

In recent years, superhero movies, museums, creators, and universities have all agreed to validate comics as an art form, but at what cost? We delve into the growing links between comics and other artistic expressions and what this implies in terms of language and markets.

Session V: Comics and Feminism.

Although feminism has had its place in the medium in previous historical periods, today it is impossible to understand comics without considering the boom of female authors and innovative trends we have experienced since the turn of the century, and especially since the rise of social movements between 2008 and 2012. In this session, we will address the impact of past feminisms on comics and the correlation between contemporary and unprecedented dimensions of the medium, which has brought with it perspectives different from the traditional ones.

Session VI: Dissemination, politics and pop culture.

“It takes time to accept a new kind of art, but eventually it is accepted” (Benoît Peeters). Are comics today anything more than memes? The recourse to comics by diverse sectors of society and culture opens a debate about their nature and their evolution. We are living through a communication boom in which images are, above all, instruments of communication and persuasion. It is therefore an ideal moment to reclaim the qualities of comics that make them an influential and unique medium.

Elizabeth McCausland, journalist, critic and researcher, and Diego Salgado, film critic and cultural commentator, have been reflecting for more than fifteen years on the meanings, contexts and potential of popular culture and its manifestations, with special emphasis on film and comics.

Diego has been particularly interested in the nature of the contemporary image, while Elisa has delved into the intersections between feminism and pop art, as well as the archetype of the superheroine—arguments that converged in her first book: Wonder Woman: Feminism as a Superpower (2019). Elisa is also a promoter of Collective of Comic Authors and has curated the exhibitions Present: Female comic book authors of yesterday and today (2016-17) y Graphic Coordinates: Forty comics by female authors from Spain, Argentina, Chile and Costa Rica (2021).

Together or separately, Diego and Elisa have collaborated in media outlets such as Cayman Cinema Notebooks, Divergent Cinema, Comicmania, The Confidential, CuCo Comic Book Notebooks, elDiario.es, Leisure Guide, Current Events Images, El País, Pikara MagazineRadio 3 The jump, Fuchsia Blood y Tebeosphere, as well as in numerous collective books.

Today they share the microphone in Pop Culture Trenches, Work in progress essays promoted by the publishing house Consonni, and they write criticism and studies on audiovisual media together in specialized publications Directed By, rockdelux, SoFilm y Solaris, in addition to giving lectures and seminars on the topics mentioned in the academic and outreach fields.

They are promoters and advisors of the ECC-UAH Chair of Research and Culture of Comics and joint authors of the essays Supernovas: A Feminist History of Audiovisual Science Fiction (errata naturae, 2019) and Dreams and Fables: The Story of Vertigo (ECC, 2022), to which other titles will soon be added.