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  • Department of Media and Cultural Studies and Journalism
    Faculty of Arts
    Palacký University
    Třída Svobody 26
    771 47 Olomouc
    Czech Republic
The book Ondřej Sekora: Mravenčí a jiné práce (Ants and Other
Works) presents the life and the broad spectrum of work of a major
figure of 20th-century Czech culture.
Open Access through Knowledge Unlatched:

https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/62880
Redakce: Tiziana D’Amico, Petr A. Bílek, Ludmila Machátová, Martin Foret Tato kniha vznikla jako soubor úvah uzavírající konferenci s názvem Popkultura a „mediated memory“: Český komiks dnes, která se konala v Benátkách od 18. do 19.... more
Redakce: Tiziana D’Amico, Petr A. Bílek, Ludmila Machátová, Martin Foret

Tato kniha vznikla jako soubor úvah uzavírající konferenci s názvem Popkultura
a „mediated memory“: Český komiks dnes, která se konala v Benátkách
od 18. do 19. dubna 2016. Podílela se na ní katedra českého jazyka s Laboratoří
literárního studia komiksu DSLCC Univerzity Ca’ Foscari Benátky,
Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, Filozofická fakulta Univerzitz Palackého
v Olomouci, České centrum Milán a Velvyslanectví ČR v Itálii. Cílem
konference, jenž platí i pro tuto knihu, bylo zkoumat vztah mezi pamětí,
dějinami a populární kulturou u specifického média, jakým je komiks
L’obiettivo di questo volume è quello di indagare il rapporto tra memoria, storia e popular culture nel medium specifico del fumetto. In particolare, il rapporto tra la produzione a fumetti e i passati non democratici. Tra memoria e... more
L’obiettivo di questo volume è quello di indagare il rapporto tra memoria, storia e popular culture nel medium specifico del fumetto. In particolare, il rapporto tra la produzione a fumetti e i passati non democratici.

Tra memoria e storia: lo spazio del fumetto? A leggere i testi che compongono questa pubblicazione, si profila all’orizzonte una domanda: il fumetto è un medium per la memoria o per la storia?
La scelta è ricaduta sul medium del fumetto per più ragioni. La maggiore
attenzione che si sta prestando negli ultimi anni al fumetto come agente
produttore dell’immaginario collettivo, esattamente quanto lo sono il  cinema e la televisione, ha permesso la creazione di uno spazio di indagine e discussione sufficientemente vasto per poter mettere in atto in maniera produttiva ricerche mirate ad argomenti interdisciplinari quali quelli qui affrontati. Allo stesso tempo, l’oggettivo aumento di prodotti a fumetti che affrontano il passato storico, nazionale e/o transnazionale (e questo vale sia per il contesto italiano che per quello ceco come per quello internazionale) permette di oltrepassare l’indagine sul singolo prodotto e il singolo autore per poter delineare meccanismi di funzionamento e tendenze interpretative dei processi di raffigurazione del passato, di formazione dell’immaginario collettivo, di costruzione della memoria comunicativa e culturale.
Research Interests:
The History of Czechoslovak Comics of the 20th Century traces the development and changes in comics as an art form in today’s Czech and Slovak Republics, from their early beginnings in the Czech and Slovak language periodicals of the late... more
The History of Czechoslovak Comics of the 20th Century traces the development and changes in comics as an art form in today’s Czech and Slovak Republics, from their early beginnings in the Czech and Slovak language periodicals of the late Austro-Hungarian Empire, through  their precipitous development after 1989 and the subsequent dissolution of Czechoslovakia. Comics (more generally, “sequential pictorial series”, or, if a simpler term is needed, “comic strips”) entered domestic popular culture as an example of a form that is a priori considered to be of foreign origin – imported and not native to the Czech and Slovak cultural environments.
The publication of The History of Czechoslovak Comics of the 20th Century is the primary output of the grant provided for the project GA ČR P406/10/2306, Komiks: dějiny — teorie (Comics: History — Theory), which was carried out between 2010-2012 at the Institute of Czech Literature AS CR and the Palacký University Faculty of Arts in Olomouc.
At the beginning of the third millennium Czech comics have gained a new lease on life. The present generation of authors follows world events, reacts to the latest trends and almost for the first time in a local context it is genuinely... more
At the beginning of the third millennium Czech comics have gained a new lease on life. The present generation of authors follows world events, reacts to the latest trends and almost for the first time in a local context it is genuinely free to create, not bound by the restrictive limitations of censorship and cultural and social rejection. As Czech comics gain in self-confidence (and self-respect), they are slowly beginning to explore both the famous, and the less well-known, periods of their history.

A concise, richly illustrated monograph, presented together with the eponymous exhibition in Brno, Czech Republic, offers the first complex work on the history of Czech comics available in the English language. Dispensing with purely chronological and historical description allowed the authors to focus on the motifs, personal and media context of sequential art in the Czech language. Together with the curators and the editors, the authors of the individual chapters include other specialists in comics and professionals from related fields such as art history, film studies and literary studies.

Contributors:
Lucie Česálková, Martin Foret, Ivan Hanousek, Michal Jareš, Pavel Kořínek, Rostislav Matulík, Tomáš Pospiszyl, Tomáš Prokůpek, Vít Schmarc
Abstract. The paper explores ways of representing smiles and laughter in comics. First a semiotic delimitation of comics is proposed, which can be understood as a code that operates in one sensory channel and simulates receptive... more
Abstract. The paper explores ways of representing smiles and laughter in comics. First a semiotic delimitation of comics is proposed, which can be understood as a code that operates in one sensory channel and simulates receptive synaesthesia. The roots of the expression of smiles within the pictorial code are found in the work of the cartoonists of the 18th and 19th centuries who created early examples of sequential art, thus establishing the tradition of later picture stories and comics. The paper then focuses on how the acoustic dimensions of laughter are represented by typographical means in comics, for example by using graphical conventions of lettering and font design. Different types of smiles and laughter are demonstrated by illustrative examples from a range of genres and styles, from the ligne claire through distinctive cartoon drawings to realistic artwork. The results are discussed in the broader context of the expression of emotions in comics. Zusammenfassung. Der Artike...
This article focuses on the defining of comics as an ‘amalgam’ in which the verbal category merges with the pictorial/iconic. The articles first discusses the concepts of the literary and the pictorial and then points out that these are... more
This article focuses on the defining of comics as an ‘amalgam’ in which the verbal category merges with the pictorial/iconic. The articles first discusses the concepts of the literary and the pictorial and then points out that these are discrete aesthetic categories, independent of the category of artistry. The author then moves on to selected phenomena that occur in the space between these two concepts: the picture book or illustrated book, and the book as artefact or visual poetry, particularly from an historical perspective. Apart from the explicit links with comics, a few phenomena important for defining its limits are highlighted. The author then specifies the opinion held hitherto that there is an opposition between the ‘verbal’ and the ‘pictorial’ in distinguishing between the two, and this opposition is also problematized. The mutual relations between word and picture are outlined in general terms and mainly in comics. In some means of expression the boundary between the two...
This article focuses on the defining of comics as an ‘amalgam’ in which the verbal category merges with the pictorial/iconic. The articles first discusses the concepts of the literary and the pictorial and then points out that these are... more
This article focuses on the defining of comics as an ‘amalgam’ in which the verbal category merges with the pictorial/iconic. The articles first discusses the concepts of the literary and the pictorial and then points out that these are discrete aesthetic categories, independent of the category of artistry. The author then moves on to selected phenomena that occur in the space between these two concepts: the picture book or illustrated book, and the book as artefact or visual poetry, particularly from an historical perspective. Apart from the explicit links with comics, a few phenomena important for defining its limits are highlighted. The author then specifies the opinion held hitherto that there is an opposition between the ‘verbal’ and the ‘pictorial’ in distinguishing between the two, and this opposition is also problematized. The mutual relations between word and picture are outlined in general terms and mainly in comics. In some means of expression the boundary between the two...
Der Artikel untersucht die Darstellung von Lachen und Lächeln im Comic. Eingangs wird eine semiotische Abgrenzung des Comics als eigenständiger Kode vorgeschlagen, der im einkanaligen Medium operiert und eine rezeptive Synästhesie... more
Der Artikel untersucht die Darstellung von Lachen und Lächeln im Comic. Eingangs wird eine semiotische Abgrenzung des Comics als eigenständiger Kode vorgeschlagen, der im einkanaligen Medium operiert und eine rezeptive Synästhesie simuliert. Die Wurzeln der Darstellung des Lächelns im Bildkode werden bei den Karikaturisten des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts verortet, die auch Bildsequenzen schufen, welche später die Tradition der Bildergeschichten und Comics einleiteten. Anschließend wird die akustische Dimension des Lachens fokussiert. Sie wird im Comic-Kode durch typographische Mittel repräsentiert, die auch andere Arten nonverbalen vokalen Verhaltens darstellen und Bedeutungen von verbalen Äußerungen präzisieren und modifizieren können. Die untersuchte Thematik wird anhand von Comicbeispielen demonstriert, die unterschiedlichen Comicgenres und -stilen (von der ligne claire bis zur realistischen Darstellung) angehören. Abschließend werden die Ergebnisse im Kontext der Erforschung von Em...
Předkládaný svazek představuje vůbec první domácí publikaci věnovanou teoretické a analytické reflexi komiksu. Ani prvotní „var“ z počátku devadesátých let, kdy se komiksu vlastně poprvé začala věnovat akademická pozornost, se mimo... more
Předkládaný svazek představuje vůbec první  domácí publikaci věnovanou teoretické a analytické reflexi komiksu. Ani prvotní „var“ z počátku devadesátých let, kdy se komiksu vlastně poprvé začala věnovat akademická pozornost,  se mimo stránky odborných časopisů a sborníků na nejrůznější témata nepromítl – a publikaci věnovanou teorii a analýze komiksu nepřinesl. Vedle překladů zahraničních popularizujících (McCloud 2008) a teoretických prací (Groensteen 2005) je tak v češtině dostupných jen několik málo dílčích příspěvků v časopisech a sbornících, často spíše publicistického než odborného charakteru. Předkládaná publikace se tedy mj. snaží zachytit onen výše popsaný kvas na českých univerzitách a naznačit možnosti a perspektivy českých comics studies.
Research Interests: