BOARD MEMBERS
Kai Mikkonen
University of Helsinki
Kai Mikkonen is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Helsinki, Finland. He is a life member of Clare Hall College, University of Cambridge, and The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters. His main research interests include 19th and early 20th century French and British literature, travel writing, comics and picture books, narrative theory and rhetorical theory of narrative, and theory of fiction. He is co-founder, and former co-chair, of the ICLA research committee on Comics and Graphic Narrative; co-founder, and former board member, of Nordic Network of Comics Research (NNCORE); and member of Consultative Committee of European Comic Art.
He is the author, amongst other books, of The Narratology of Comic Art (Routledge, 2017), Narrative Paths: African Travel in Modern Fiction and Nonfiction (The Ohio State UP, 2015), and Kuva ja sana [Image and Word in Interaction] (Gaudeamus, 2005).
“KRRTCHMVRTZ!” (Captain Haddock, Les Bijoux de la Castafiore)
My research interests in Comics Studies include narrative theory, narrative meaning, reading comics, characterization, dialogue, hybrid works between comics and picturebooks, adaptation and remediation, and the 19th century history of comic art.
(Ex Libris by cartoonist Matti Hagelberg)
C-S Publications
(forthcoming) “Between Picturebooks and Comics, or What Hybrid Forms Can Do to Reading.” Children’s Literature 51 (2023).
(with Jean Braithwaite) ”Figural Solidarity: Grappling with Meaning in Comics”. Comicalités. Études de culture graphique 2022.
https://journals.openedition.org/comicalites/7729
“The Vanishing Narrator Meets the Fundamental Narrator: On the Literary Historical and Transmedial Limitations of the Narrator Concept.” In: Optional-Narrator Theory. Principles, Perspectives, Proposals. Ed. Sylvie Patron. Nebraska University Press, 2020. 238-58.
Also published in French as ”Le narrateur fondamental et le narrateur évanescent: sur les limites historiques et transmédiales du concept de narrateur.” In: La théorie du narrateur optionnel : Principes, perspectives, propositions. Ed. Sylvie Patron. Presses universitaires du Septentrion 2022.
(with Olli Philippe Lautenbacher) “Global Attention in Reading Comics. Eye-movement indications of interplay between narrative content and layout”. ImageText: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies 10.2 (2019). http://imagetext.english.ufl.edu/archives/v10_2/mikkonen/
“Abstracted Narration and Narrative Abstraction. Forms of Interplay between Narration and Abstraction in Comics”. In: Comics and Abstraction/ Bande dessinée et abstraction. Vol. 1. Ed. Aarnoud Rommens, with the collaboration of Benoît Crucifix, Björn-Olav Dozo, Erwin Dejasse, and Pablo Turnes. Liège/Bruxelles: Presses universitaires de Liège/La Cinquième Couche, 2019. 262-82.
The Narratology of Comic Art. London/New York: Routledge 2017.
“Dialogue in Comics”. In: Dialogue across Media. Eds. Jarmila Mildorf and Bronwen Thomas. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Johns Benjamins, 2016. 225-249.
“Subjectivity and Style in Graphic Narratives”. In: From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels. Contributions to the Theory and History of Graphic Narrative. Eds. Daniel Stein and Jan-Noël Thon. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2013. 101-123. (reprinted in paperback in 2015)
“Focalization in Comics. From the Specificities of the Medium to Conceptual Reformulation”. Scandinavian Journal of Comics Art 1/2012. 69-95.
“Transmedial Focalization Theory and the Narratological Challenge of Graphic Narratives”. Special Issue American Studies/Amerikastudien. Title: “Critical Approaches to American Graphic Narratives.” Guest editors: Daniel Stein, Christina Meyer, Micha Edlich. 2011. 637-52.
« Le narrateur implicite dans la bande dessinée. La transformation du style indirect libre dans deux adaptations en bandes dessinées de Madame Bovary ». Image & Narrative 11.4 (2010): 185-207.
“The Implicit Narrator in Comics. Transformations of Free Indirect Discourse in Two Graphic Adaptations of Madame Bovary.” International Journal of Comic Art 13.2 (Fall 2011): 473-487.
“Remediation and the Sense of Time in Graphic Narratives”. In: The Rise and the Reason of Comics and Graphic Literature. Critical Essays on the Form. Eds. Joyce Goggin and Dan Hassler-Forest. McFarland Press, 2010. 74-86.
“Presenting Minds in Graphic Narratives”. Partial Answers 6.2 (June 2008): 301-321.
“The Paradox of Intersemiotic Translation and the Comic Book: Examples from Enki Bilal’s Nikopol Trilogy”. Word & Image 22.2 (April-June 2006): 101-117.
”Kuvat ilman sanoja, sarja ilman kuvia – Sarjakuvakertomuksen ainutlaatuinen ja ”luonnollinen” fokalisaatio”. Luonnolliset ja luonnottomat kertomukset. Jälkiklassisen narratologian suuntia. Toim. Mari Hatavara, Markku Lehtimäki ja Pekka Tammi. Gaudeamus, 2010. 305-332.
”Kuvan ja sanan vuorovaikutus sarjakuvassa psykoanalyysin viitekehyksessä – esimerkkinä Jacques Tardin 120, rue de la Gare”. Ruutujen välissä: näkökulmia sarjakuvaan. Toim. Herkman, Juha. Tampere: Tampere University Press, 1996. 81-117.
Into C-S
My activities
ICLA Research Commitee on Comics Studies and Graphic Narrative (2024)
