Spring 2026
Much – Seminar Spring 2026. Always on a Friday between 12.00-15.00. Location: NIC0505-K3 studio. Niagara-building, Malmö.´
Book-release x 2 + seminar: Friday April 10th at 13.15 CET
Jakob Dittmar & Gunnar Krantz:
Self-publishing comics as research practice
In current comics research it becomes more and more established to produce comics as a research method as well as for the communication of results. Dedicated international publications exist for ”research-comics”, but these are few as established comics publishers are unfamiliar with the academic contexts and academic publishers lack insight into the field of comics. Duly, most of these works are published by the researchers themselves, despite the lack of clear ways for distribution and very limited options for sales.
In this seminar, Jakob Dittmar and Gunnar Krantz reflect on two recent comics they have published; Gunnar Krantz Två Månader i Tanger (2025) and Jakob Dittmar How did we get here? (2026). The leading question for the seminar will focus on how to improve the use and placement of comics in research. Who helps researchers to reach their audiences and how can we at MaU get better at this? Would it be meaningful to use MaU-press for a comics-series even?
Jakob Dittmar: How did we get here?:
How did we get here? is told around two figures from the anthropological collection at the Louvre’s Pavillon des Sessions. This album tells the memories of a moai from their long treck from Easter Island to Paris – along the bottom of the seas started off by atom-bomb-tests at Mururoa. These are confronted with more probable alternatives, talking of factual reminders of cultural conflict and change in the past and present. Traces from both narratives are in the museum exhibition, not at least some life birds from Middle America.
The comic suggests museums as safe spaces in troubling times while touching on questions of acquisition and belonging – the ambition is to invite the reader to explore the visuals and trace constructions of heritage and narrations.
Gunnar Krantz: Två månader i Tanger:
In 1955, his father Göran hitch-hiked to Tangiers, at the time an internationally special zone in which the giants of finance, US American jet-set, smugglers, pirates, and the avantgarde of English language literature mingled. What was intended to be a daytrip turned into a stay of two months, as he was quickly dragged in by the small group of Swedes there, described by Alice Timander as a strange mix of rugged characters; Tax refugees, pentecostal Christians, and adventurers with a yearning for freedom, sunshine, and warm weather. On flight from the Swedish Folkhem. In this documentary graphic novel, Gunnar follows Göran’s traces and tries to understand the time and the place. The book has been nominated as best self-published comicbook of the year by Forum för Seriefolk (2025).
ZOOM: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/64715382214
We begin with lunch at 12.00, where you have the opportunity to present and discuss ongoing work, plans and ideas (bring your own lunch), followed by a seminar that starts at 13.15 CET.
At the seminar the above comics are sold for a very nice price, too.
Past seminars:
20/2 at 13.00 (PM). He still is the Law! Dystopia, Neoliberalism and Punitivism in the United Kingdom 1977-2010 (Cont.).
Lucas Silva de Oliveira (Hybrid)
Lucas Silva de Oliveira, visiting PhD-student at Malmö University from State University of Maringá (UEM) will conclude his visit with an update on his ongoing analysis of the comic Judge Dredd, with the intent of researching the relations between the comic and the political and cultural context in which it was written´, as well as researching its sources.
22/5 TBA
5/6 TBA
Past seminars – Autumn 2025
Much – Seminar Autumn 2025. Always on a Friday between 12.00-15.00. Location: NIC0505-K3 studio. Niagara-building, Malmö.
We begin with lunch at 12.00, where you have the opportunity to present and discuss ongoing work, plans and ideas (bring your own lunch), followed by a seminar that starts at 13.15.
3/10 at 13.00 (PM). He is the Law! Dystopia, Neoliberalism and Punitivism in the United Kingdom (1977-2010).
Lucas Silva de Oliveira (Hybrid)
Lucas Silva de Oliveira, visiting PhD-student at Malmö University from State University of Maringá (UEM) will introduce his ongoing analysis of the comic Judge Dredd, with the intent of researching the relations between the comic and the political and cultural context in which it was written´, as well as researching its sources.
ZOOM: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/64715382214
24/10 at 14.00 PM (CET). Chalk Talks.
Dr. Mathieu Li-Goyette (Online)
Dr. Li-Goyette is a comics researcher with a PhD in comparative literature from the Université de Montréal. His dissertation on the emergence of the American comic strip in the newspaper ecosystem at the turn of the 20th century (Chalk Talks: Écosophie séquentielle du comic strip américain [1846-1929], 2023) recieved the John A. Lent Scholarship in Comics Studies.
Note the time – due to the time-difference, we will start at 14.00 (CET).
ZOOM: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/64715382214
14/11 09.11 (AM) – 17.00 (PM) Research initiation and Comics Archives – symposium.
The Comics Archive in Malmö has expanded significantly in recent years through large donations. To provide a better overview and inspire scholars to initiate new projects, Malmö University Comics Hub/much and The Comics Archive invites you to a full-day symposium where we will present some of the most important additions. During this full-day symposium, comic scholars will also provide different perspectives on comics research and parts of the collections will be presented thematically. The goal is to inspire you to initiate new research with the starting point in the archive’s unique and largely unresearched collections.
The Symposium will be in the form of presentations and workshop, so there will be no call for papers.
Target group: Comics-scholars, PhD-students and students at advanced level.
Cost: Free.
Date: November 14, 2025.
Place: Malmö university, K3-Studio, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1 and The Comics Archive, Friisgaan 19b, Malmö.
To attend, please mail Gunnar Krantz (no later than November 10th): gunnar.krantz@mau.se
17/1. Comic Studies at K3: The road ahead.
Jakob F. Dittmar, Malmö University.
This meeting is divided into two parts:
The first part will discuss potential developments of the current and future courses on the comics cluster at K3. We will look into possible modularization of some aspects as well as into a clearer progression of courses, including more explicit collaboration with other areas.
The second part will discuss the need for comics terminology and definitions in the international context of academic comics research. As examples, recent contributions to the discussion of “graphic novel” and “one-panel comics” will be briefly presented by Jakob Dittmar. The discussion can continue on these cases but also widen into a more general look at comics terminology and related confusions and contradictions.
Jakob Dittmar will also present the new and 3d. edition of his book Comics-Analyse (Herbert von Halem Verlag) that will be published during the spring.
14/2. Danske tegneserier i en brydningstid
Charlotte J. Fabricius, Syddansk Universitet
Danske tegneserier er mere talrige, mangfoldige og kritikerroste end nogensinde før. Alligevel kæmper langt hovedparten af danske tegneserieskabere med at tjene penge på deres kunstneriske virke. I dette oplæg vil jeg diskutere et potentielt fremtidigt forskningsprojekt, der skal undersøges danske tegneserieskaberes vilkår og den danske tegneseriebranche med fokus på tre overordnede tendenser: institutionalisering, digitalisering og internationalisering.
14/3. Solidaroperan – en experimentell framställning i risografiskt tryck
Gunnar Krantz, Malmö universitet.
Solidaroperan är en tecknad serie i storformat (A2), som är framställd i risografiskt tryck. Arbetet ingår i forskningsprojektet Autografisk dubbelexponering – den tuschade svarta linjens betydelse i tecknade serier. Serien prövar att utifrån tryckteknikens möjlighet, skapa ett narrativ som gestaltar den kooperativa folkrörelsen Solidar under 100 år. Seminarium i: NIC0505-K3 studio. Utställning, Malmö.K3 Open Space på Niagara (B.v).
25/4. Seminarium. Making Archival Material Talk, adapting historic narrations in comics
Jakob Dittmar, Anders Høg Hansen, Malmö University
This seminar is going to discuss uses and approaches to archival material for producing documentary comics with a history or memory-focus.
In remediating different histories, simplification practices in history-telling are at work. The biggest challenge in re-telling the past is to achieve its representation without a mystification caused by gross simplifications. In current debate, these simplifications in post-colonial / de-colonial theory are quite apparent even in topics that seem not to relate to just these theories. While there are many possible voices in the archival material and other representations on each individual topic, only selected voices are actually expressed in the re-telling. Reasons for the selection of material, topics, positions and voices, have been many and have changed over time according to social, political, and academic norms and interests.
As a method to gain more advanced insights into the process of adaptation and storytelling, we propose a combination of established academic methods with artistic research. Starting from analysingcurrent German authored comics dealing with German memory and history (Dittmar and Høg Hansen, 2024), we discuss material from our comics courses and from own experiments. On our courses on ”Journalistic and documentary comics” we have established exercises to train our students in handling archival material and to explain a topic in its historic context employing and selecting relevant aspects to explain the history of a place with the help of, e.g., artefacts, press clippings, photography. The challenges encountered in these exercises show a need to understand better the underlying challenges and processes. With the help of experiences from these courses as well as our own re-telling of past events, we understand better the limits, challenges, and other factors that influence the adaptation, transformation, simplification, and myth-making of historic matters in the re-tellings of history by others.
9/5. Seminarium.
Martin P. Lund, Oskar Aspman. Malmö University. K3-Studio.
Serieforskningen växer snabbt och lockar allt fler studenter och forskare. Samtidigt kan det vara svårt att få en överblick över fältet och dess historia, då det fortfarande finns få introduktionsböcker, läromedel eller verk som historiserar serieforskningen. Många tänkare kan vara svåra för såväl nya studenter som vana forskare att förstå och sätta sig in i. Under seminariet presenterar Martin Lund ett förslag på en möjlig resurs som kan fungera som en orientering i serieforskningen: en bok som på ett tillgängligt sätt introducerar olika stilbildande teoretiker eller skolor i var sitt kapitel. Dessa kapitel kan också innehålla diskussioner om styrkor, svagheter, brister och användningsområden för de teorier och perspektiv som boken behandlar. En sådan bok kan vara användbar för både studenter och forskare som vill ge sig in i fältet eller som redan forskar om serier men vill veta mer om hur fältet har tagit form och vilka alternativa ingångar som finns. Diskussionen kan kretsa kring frågor som: Är en sådan resurs önskvärd? Vilka teoretiker och teorier kan tänkas ingå i en sådan volym? Hur kan arbetet läggas upp? Kan boken publiceras på både svenska och engelska?
End of semester.
TBA