Talks - Damian Mandzunowski

Below is a list of my past and upcoming presentations at conferences, workshops, and invited lectures:

01.10 / “Into the Maoverse: Reconfigurations of the Heroic in Chinese Socialist Comics,” with Lena Henningsen, at the ComFor Annual Conference 2026, Justus Liebig University Giessen, Germany.
16.09 / “How to (Machine) Read 38,00 Chinese Comics? Distilling Publication Metadata from Lianhuanhua Catalogues,” with Tilen Zupan, at the European Association for Digital Humanities (EADH) Annual Conference 2026, Jagiellonian University Cracow, Poland.
01.09 / “Translating Lianhuanhua: Collaborative Academic Translation of Chinese Socialist Comics,” online lecture discussing ChinaComx Translations for the Summer School Translating comics from the Arab, Chinese, and Japanese Worlds, University of Bergamo, Italy.
23.07 / “Reader Criticism of New Socialist Comics (Lianhuanhua),” at the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS) 2026 Biennial Conference, Venice, Italy (panel organizer).
14.03 / “A Gallery of Villains: Standardizing Images of Enmity in Chinese Socialist Comics (Lianhuanhua),” at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2026 Annual Conference, Vancouver, Canada (panel co-organizer).

21.11 / “Wie sehen unsere Feinde aus? Fremdbilder in chinesischen sozialistischen Comics (Lianhuanhua),” at the XXXVI. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Vereinigung für Chinastudien (DVCS), University of Hamburg, Germany.
03.09 / “Visual Politics of Historical Representation: Chinese Communist Party Anniversary Comics—1951 and 1981 (and 2011),” at the British Association for Chinese Studies (BACS) 2025 Annual Conference, Leicester, UK (panel co-organizer).
27.06 / “Revolutionary Onomatopoeia: Soundscapes in/of Chinese Comics of the Mao Era,” at the international symposium Competing for the People’s Eyes and Ears from Mao to Xi: Transformations of Cultural Life in the PRC, Charles University, Prague, Czechia.
15.05 / “Radio Study and Other Sounds of Collective Reading Activities in the People’s Republic of China,” at the conference Sonic Histories of East Asia: Thinking History Through Sound, Ca’Foscari University, Venice, Italy.
24.04 / “A Little Picture Story at Your Service: Lianhuanhua as Instruction Manual,” at the ChinaComx workshop Lianhuanhua as Method, Heidelberg University, Germany.

15.10 / “Into the Maoverse: Heroes and Villains in Chinese Comics,” with Lena Henningsen, keynote for the finissage of the exhibition Comics from China: Entertainment – Realities – Propaganda?, Heidelberg University, Germany.
24.09 / “Beyond Captain America and Akira: Heroes and Villains in Chinese Comics and Caricature,” with Lena Henningsen, the 399th talk delivered at the New York Comics & Picture-story Symposium, Parsons School of Design, The New School, NY, USA.
12.07 / “Beyond Manga and Marvel: Digitally Approaching Chinese Comics,” with Aijia Zhang, at the conference Charting the European D-SEA: Digital Scholarship in East Asian Studies, Staatsbiliothek zu Berlin, Germany.
12.06 / “Collective Reading Activities after the Cultural Revolution,” at the conference Political Lives in Socialist China, Centre d’études sur la Chine moderne et contemporaine at EHESS, Paris, France.

24.08 / “Collective Reading in Chinese Comics of the Mao Era: A Socialist-Realist Deus ex Machina?,” at the European Association for Chinese Studies (EACS) 2022 Biennial Conference, Olomouc, Czechia (panel organizer).
26.03 / “Collective Reading Activities, Socialist Subjects, and the PRC of 1977,” at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2022 Annual Conference, Honolulu, Hawai’i, USA (panel organizer).
04.03 / “Reading Through What Crises? Volume 5 of Mao’s Selected Works as Calming Medium in a Changing Socialist China,” at the international symposium Media & Materiality: Category Crisis and Transitional Moments in East Asia and Eastern Europe, Center for Historical Research at The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA.
20.01 / “Lesegruppen und kollektives Lesen in chinesischen visuellen Medien,” at the lecture series Ästhetik, Medien und Kulturen in China, Universität zu Köln, Cologne, Germany.

21.04 / “Jiang Qing, Caricatured: Iconography of Villainizing after 1976,” at the lecture series Jiang Qing’s Last Revolution: Exploring Alternative Understanding of China’s Past, University of Vienna, Austria.
19.01 / “I’ve Seen That Reading Group Before: Late Mao-Era Collective Reading Acts in Posters and Photographs,” at the READCHINA virtual lecture series Practices of Reading in the People’s Republic of China, University of Freiburg, Germany.

21.03 / “Communicating Political Change during Rituals of Collective Reading in Mid-1970s China,” at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2020 Annual Conference, Boston, USA (panel organizer). [event cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic]
07.03 / “Marxist-Leninist Snapshots: Visual Textual Objects from the Last Mass-Reading Campaign under Mao,” at the conference Seeking, Circulating, and Analysing Textual Objects in Chinese Studies: Discussions among Academics and Collectors, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. [event cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic]

17.11 / “Spaces of Reading Groups—Reading Groups as Spaces,” at the XXX. Jahrestagung der Deutschen Vereinigung für Chinastudien (DVCS), Heidelberg University, Germany.
02.11 / “Communicating Three Loves: Collective Reading Activities in Early Reform Era China,” at the Contemporary China Graduate Workshop 2019, University of Freiburg, Germany.
18.07 / “Reading Groups and the Pursuit of Civility in Early Reform Era Tianjin,” at the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) 2019, Leiden, the Netherlands.

23.03 / “Caricaturing Jiang Qing: Manhua and the Anti-Gang of Four Campaign, 1976-1981,” at the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) 2018 Annual Conference, Washington D.C., USA.

06.05 / “The Traitor, the Nazi, and the Empress: A First Look at 1970s Manhua Depictions of Jiang Qing,” at the conference Reading Intellectual and Literary Change during China’s Long 1970s, University of Freiburg, Germany.