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Comics &#38; Cultural TheoryStudies in Comicscontact email: studiesincomics@gmail.comFrom Akira to Žižek: Comics and Contemporary Cultural TheoryPapers are invited for Studies in Comics volume 3.2.  This special  issue seeks to provide a forum for new articulations between comics  studies and contemporary cultural theory.  The importance and continued  relevance of post-structuralist/postmodernist thought, the Frankfurt  school’s studies of mass culture, McLuhan’s media theory and Bourdieu’s  critical sociology are rightly acknowledged.  Such figures dominate  theoretical academic discourse on comics, as in other areas of cultural  studies, often at the expense of engagement with alternative strands of  critical thinking.Rather than risking stagnation, comics studies needs to critically  engage with theoretical paradigms not yet sourced.  Submissions are  welcome from scholars and enthusiasts that explore the conjunctions of  comics and cultural theory.   These could be engagements with the work  of specific thinkers or emergent schools including, but not limited to:Bruno Latour and ANT – Michel Serres – Paul Virilio – eco-criticism –  thing theory - N. Katherine Hayles – Teresa de Lauretis - Franco  Moretti – Manuel De Landa – Manuel Castells - cognitive capitalism –  transmedia narratives – Giorgio Agamben – Édouard Gissant – Jacques  Rancière – Friedrich Kittler – non-representational theory - speculative  realism/materialism - Alain Badiou – Zygmunt Bauman – Rosi Braidotti –  Antonio Negri – Jan van Dijk - affect theory – Lev Manovitch - Kojin  Karatani – visual culture studies - Slavoj Žižek...Articles should be 4,000-8,000 words from any discipline with a  strong critical focus.  Abstracts should be received by 1st May 2012 in  the first instance.  Please send 300 word abstracts to studiesincomics@googlemail.com and include the word ARTICLE in the subject heading.  Please indicate  the intended word count of the article.  Completed papers will be  required by 15th August 2012.  All submissions are peer reviewed and  papers must be in English.  Reviews of publications and exhibitions are  also welcome, as are creative submissions, by the same deadlines  indicated above.Tony Venezia, guest editor.http://www.intellectbooks.co.uk/journals/view-journal,id=168/view,page=2/