CfP: Workshop Narrating Emancipation in Cuban and Eastern European Graphic Storytelling. Analogies and Entanglements (March 25–27, 2026)

Throughout the 20th and 21st century graphic storytelling has served as a significant, though often underestimated means for disseminating and negotiating emancipation narratives. Such narratives play a pivotal role in socialist and post-socialist societies in Latin America and Eastern Europe since the Cold War and after 1989. For instance, in Cuba, comic hero Elpidio Valdés was meant to show children and adults the courage of the 19th century anti-colonial fighters while his creator Juan Padrón transformed his experience in the USSR into a part of his graphic autobiography. In the Soviet Union, image-text narratives about Cuba, such as the children’s books by Vasily Chichkov, Vitaly Korzhikov or others, not only helped to reinforce the idea of the USSR’s superiority as master and mentor of socialist emancipation, but in some cases emphasized the autonomy of Cuban cultural development, thereby challenging the official Soviet narrative. Regardless of such telling examples, little research has been conducted so far to unravel the role of graphic storytelling in emancipation discourses within the respective regions. Even fewer studies have explored comparative perspectives or transatlantic entanglements between Latin America—particularly Cuba, the “adored child of the socialist world” (Anne Gorsuch 2015: 520)—and Eastern Europe in this context.
Although often dismissed as mere popular entertainment or children’s fare, image-text narratives such as comics, illustrated books, and graphic novels have long served as powerful tools for conveying political messages—ranging from state propaganda to dissident views. Moreover, in the second half of the 20th century an underground comic scene emerged that sought to escape this dichotomy. What unites the various types of multimodal storytelling is their apparently intuitive accessibility appealing to a wide-ranged readership. As a result, image-text narratives often address multiple audiences and may entail ambiguity. The interplay of verbal and visual strands of narration and representation offers a wide range of possibilities for producing different layers of meaning, in particular in terms of time, spatiality, and perspective “asking us to read back and forth between images and words” (Marianne Hirsch 2004, 12–13).

The workshop focuses on the tension between official and unofficial, as well as collective and individual narratives of emancipation. These include, among others, socialist narratives of liberation from feudalism, colonialism, and slavery, as well as post-socialist narratives portraying the end of socialism as the “end of history” and entry into the so-called “free” world. Of particular interest are ex-centric emancipation narratives that engage critically with official discourses—for example, those emerging from exile and diaspora, from youth cultures, or from other societal groups such as LGBTQI+ communities, ethnic minorities, religious groups, and others. Favoring both a comparative and an entangled history approach we seek to gather a small group of scholars interested in socialist and postsocialist graphic narratives from Cuba and Eastern Europe for an intensive discussion-centered workshop. Contributions may focus on structural, thematic, or aesthetic analogies, as well as on specific entanglements between Cuba and Eastern Europe. Joint proposals by scholars working in Latin American and Eastern European studies are particularly welcome.

Contributions may address the following questions:
• How do Cuban and Eastern European image-text narratives of the Cold War and the post-1989 period construct narratives of emancipation at the intersection of individual and collective, child and adult, dependence and autonomy, nationalism and internationalism, diaspora and homeland?
• How, in what forms, and for what purposes do these narratives circulate between Eastern Europe and Cuba?
• What representations of Cuba are created in Eastern European image-text narratives and vice versa? What comparisons are drawn between regionally specific emancipation movements (e.g. abolition, end of serfdom) and to what end?
• How and to what extent do these image-text narratives position themselves between different cultural, political, and economic centers?*

The workshop is organized by Anne Brüske (Department for Interdisciplinary and Multiscalar Area Studies / University of Regensburg) and Karoline Thaidigsmann (Slavic Department / Heidelberg University). It will take place on March 25–27, 2026 at the University of Regensburg. We are in the process of securing funding to reimburse participants’ travel and accommodation costs. Proposals with an abstract of 300 words and a short CV (max. 150 words) can be submitted by September 15, 2025.
Please direct your proposal and any inquiries to: anne.brueske@ur.de and karoline.thaidigsmann@slav.uni-heidelberg.de