Community Festival, aka ComFest, will collaborate with Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and its current exhibit, Tales From la Vida: Latinx Comics, for a special fundraising event. The event will raise funds for CRIS and ETSS, and will feature an opening lecture by Frederick Luis Aldama, curator of the exhibit with Jenny Robb. A series of guided tours during the event will highlight the program.
Past Events
Frenchy Lunning: Seeking the Shôjo Through an Ecology of Desire March 20, 2019 -There is no single image or iconic aspect of the shôjo…but you know it when you see it.
FUJIMOTO YukariIt is impossible not to notice the perplexing multitude of contradictions to be found in the materiality of the highly patriarchal culture of contemporary Japan. It is paradoxically encrusted — overpoweringly — with the consuming evidence of the feminine; and not just any feminine, but specifically the young, cute, endearing femininity of the shôjo. Her trace is everywhere, and yet, who or what is she? Travelling through the postwar emergence and consequent proliferation, transformations, and translations of shôjo manga first in Japan, but ultimately globally; this discussion will investigate its various representations, as well as the many scholarly explanations, definitions, and descriptions of the shôjo in order to arrive at a notion of what is, at this moment, the tentative center of what might be understood as a rhizomic ecology of desire. Although various origins, endings, and subterranean mysteries can be plotted deep in its short (perhaps) history, nevertheless, this discussion will grab at the objects entangled in our present that are redolent with shôjo history, texts, images, meanings, and inferences, as they bob up into our view. Inevitably, of course, we will end with more questions than when we began, as she, by nature of her changing temporality and multiplicity, will always evade a definitive profile; yet it is worth the journey.
This event is FREE and open to the public. Let us know you’re coming on Facebook
2019 Will Eisner Week Comic Studies Forum March 7, 2019 Join us for the 2nd annual Will Eisner Week Comics Studies Forum at The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum! Come hear from comics scholars on their most recent work in the field.
Our feature presentation will be from Kate Polak, entitled “Displacing the Memorial: Holocaust Comics in Conversation with Memory.” Kate Polak is Assistant Professor of English at Wittenberg University, where she teaches literature and writing. Her book, Ethics in the Gutter: Empathy and Historical Fiction in Comics, was nominated for an Eisner Award. Her current projects include a book on Holocaust memorialization in the digital age, essays on the #metoo movement, and a graphic memoir.
A Collaboration with ComFest Celebrating Tales From la Vida: Latinx Comics, the book and exhibit March 2, 2019 
Celebrating the Life and Art of Barbara Shermund with Liza Donnelly February 7, 2019 Join us on Thursday, February 7th at 6:30pm for a program and reception celebrating Barbara Shermund, the subject of our current exhibit, Tell Me A Story Where The Bad Girl Wins: The Life and Art of Barbara Shermund, on display through March 31st at The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.
6:30pm, Jean and Charles Schulz Lecture Hall: Presentation by New Yorker cartoonist and resident cartoonist of CBS News, Liza Donnelly, on cartoonists who are women who have worked at The New Yorker. Introduction by Dr. Judith Yaross Lee, author of Defining New Yorker Humor. Opening remarks by Amanda Gormley, art collector and niece of Barbara Shermund.
7:30pm: Reception, exhibit viewing, and book signing for Liza Donnelly’s Funny Ladies: The New Yorker’s Greatest Women Cartoonists and Their Cartoons
Please note: our galleries will remain open from 1:00pm to 8:30pm on February 7th for exhibit viewing before and after the program.
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Spotlight on "Sylvia" creator Nicole Hollander November 14, 2018 Join us for an evening with renowned cartoonist NICOLE HOLLANDER on Wednesday, November 14 from 6:00-7:30 PM at The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.
Hollander’s long running newspaper comic strip Sylvia commented with acerbic wit on political, gender and social issues for over 30 years, from the late 1970s until Hollander retired the strip in 2012. Sylvia’s unapologetic feminist voice stood out amongst other comic strips appearing in the newspaper, and the strip achieved a cult following throughout its run.
In 2018, Hollander published her illustrated memoir, We Ate Wonderbread with Fantagraphics Books Inc.
The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum is proud to be the home of the Nicole Hollander Collection of original art, archives, and ephemera.
Come early and view an open house selection of materials from the collection!
5:00 – 6:00 pm — Nicole Hollander Collection open house in the Will Eisner Semonar Room (Rm. 205)
6:00 – 7:00 pm — Nicole Hollander presentation and interview with BICLM Archives Associate Ann Lennon
7:00 – 7:30pm — Book signingFREE and open to the public