Paper acts as both the positive and negative space of illustrated narrative, the illustrative object and site of communication. Its tactility comprises both conscious and unconscious expressions. It can be engineered, folded, turned, cut-out, collaged, tissued, layered, burned, manipulated. It is the material of dimensionality itself, highlighting 2D and 3D as expressive formal choices. The relative affordability of paper as a medium has multiplied its disseminative and activist possibilities.Its impermanence signals ephemerality and motivates the archival drive to preserve. Paper can be understood as artefact, not only in the sense of being a physical object of its present time, but also as a physical object whose future is marked by deterioration; today, paper immediately calls forward the ecological necessity to recycle and manufacture sustainably.

Paper is current and discursive in its many social applications. Its properties allow for working on miniature, life-size, and monumental scales, granting illustrative practices the ability to operate in diverse impactful ways. Paper is often the material that models a final product.

We invite 250-word abstracts for 20-minute papers, academic posters*, panels, or workshops on such topics as: