On June 11, Prof. Frank Bramlett from the University of Nebraska at Omaha visited SFS and gave a lecture with the title "ProducingAlien, Satiric, and Everyday Identities in the Discourse of Web Comics".Deputy Dean Prof. Chen Yang chaired the lecture. Dean Prof. Huang Guowen and some 60teachers and students in SFS attended.

  Prof. Bramlett made a multimodal analysis of popular web comics in theU.S.. With very simple language and some typical examples, he explained thealien, satiric and everyday images produced in popular web comics via elementslike word choices, background settings, physical characteristics of figures inthe comics, etc.

  The lecture aroused tremendous interestthe in the audience. The teachers and studentspresent asked questions regarding the research methodologies,theoretical framework and the social functions of U.S. web comics, which Prof.Bramlett answered in detail.

  Frank Bramlett is a professor in the Department of English at theUniversity of Nebraska at Omaha. He is also director of the TESOL Program and afaculty member in Black Studies, Women’s & Gender Studies and the MA programin Language Teaching. He is editor or co-editor of three books on comicsstudies and has written several book chapters and journal articles. He is onthe editorial board of two scholarly journals and is program director of theInternational Comic Arts Forum (ICAF).

   This is Prof. Bramlett's second visit to SFS.The first visit was in March this year, when he came with Chair of theDepartment of English of UNO Prof. Tracy Bridgeford and others to discuss the cooperation between the Department of English at UNO and SFS.

(Reportby Qin Jianhua  Pictures by Cen Haoxian)