Associate Professor Carol Tilley will be the keynote speaker at the Marantz Picturebook Research Symposium, "Comics and the Graphic Narrative: The Future of the Movement," which will be held August 5-6 at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio. The symposium will feature talks on interdisciplinary research in areas related to comics and graphic novels and include breakout sessions, exhibits, posters, and panels.
Tilley will give the talk, "Comics and Young Readers: Back to the Future," which will focus on how today's trends in comics publishing for and readership among youth actually reflect older phenomena. She will also be moderating a roundtable about the different meaning of comics.
"It wasn't all that long ago that librarians and educators would have been loathe to consider comics as worthy of consideration as picture books," Tilley said." Even 11 years ago when I started at the iSchool, gatekeepers of children's reading still frequently looked on comics with some disdain. To have comics highlighted as the focus for the Marantz symposium demonstrates that librarians and educators have finally caught up to what kids have long understood: that comics have value . . . and they're a lot of fun."
At the iSchool, Tilley teaches courses in comics reader's advisory, media literacy, and youth services librarianship. Part of her scholarship focuses on the intersection of young people, comics, and libraries, particularly in the United States during the mid-twentieth century. Her research on anti-comics advocate Fredric Wertham has been featured in The New York Times and other media outlets. An in-demand speaker on the history of comics readership and libraries, Tilley was a 2016 Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards judge and currently serves as president of the Comics Studies Society.