Comics Studies Society Conference

CSS 2025 | "Resistant, Resilient, and Resolute: Social Justice and Comics"

Thursday, 10 July 2025 - Saturday, 12 July 2025
Michigan State University

Good news, y’all! I’ll be presenting my own comic (Studies in Girlhood) and essay on transnormativity and “girlhood” in transmasculine-authored graphic memoir at the Comics Studies Society annual conference this July. As it’s at Michigan State, I’ll be able to drive, thankfully, and stay at my sister’s in Milan, Michigan, which is near Ann Arbor. I’ll make sure to bring by some copies of the comic for sale or trade if you want one!

Hope to see you there,

Elk

CAKE! June 28-29

Yes, it’s true! I’ll be tabling at CAKE again this summer, organized by my fellow autobio comics artist pal with anxiety and depression, Kevin Budnik. We met at CAKE years ago and realized we both had minicomics alled “It’s Okay to be Sad” and had a laugh about it. Mine’s out of print, but his is is still going! Make sure to congratulate him on his success if you swing by, he’s a great guy.

In terms of inventory, I’ll definitely make sure to bring more copies of Studies in Girlhood, as well as Keying into Ambient Music, and a top secret new project (shhh!)

Make sure to follow me on instagram to see my exact tabling location once the date for CAKE gets closer. Also, remember the new CAKE venue is at the Irish American Heritage Center (4626 N Knox Ave, Chicago, IL 60630) this year, so put that in your calendars. Can’t wait to see you there!

-Elk

Tabling at TCAF in June!

It’s a dream come true! I’ve always wanted to table at TCAF, and this year I made it! TCAF 2025 will be held from June 7-8 at Toronto Metropolitan University's Mattamy Athletic Centre. I’m pretty sure I’ll be tabling on the ice rink… lol. You can peruse the full list of exhibitors here. Check back here on my website or on my instagram stories closer to the date for an exhibitor map with my exact location. I’m still deciding what all I’m going to bring, as a half table requires strategic inventory. I definitely will be debuting something new, either part (or all??) of my comics dissertation to pitch to publishers or perhaps a printed version of the comic essay I made on crip/queer temporalities… Stay tuned!

-Elk

Ting Zine Expo

Ting Zine Expo runs Thursday, May 1st from 6-9PM at the TAP Centre for Creativity downtown London, Ontario.

I’ll have a full table with reprints of Studies in Girlhood (2024) and the second edition of Keying into Ambient Music (2023), among other things.

ICAF 2025 - San Diego!

Excited to be presenting at ICAF in San Diego in a couple weeks! I’ll be presenting a comic and accompanying essay I wrote for a collection called Norm-critical Perspectives in Comics, edited by Robert Aman and Lars Wallner (Linköping University). This mixed text-based and graphic essay is called “Transmasculine ‘Girlhood’ in Graphic Memoir”. I’ll also be bringing copies of the accompanying zine “Studies in Girlhood” to the session as well for interested parties. See info below!

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Thursday, April 10 (1:30-2:45pm)

PANEL 2B: INTERSECTIONALITY AND GENDER IN GRAPHIC MEMOIR
Library Addition 76
Moderator: Brittany Tullis, St. Ambrose University

• “Transmasculine “Girlhood” in Graphic Memoir.” Elric Paauw, University of Western Ontario

• “Constructing Female Self-Images in Autobiographical Francophone Bandes Dessinées : An Intersectional Perspective.” Myriam Macé, Universität Bremen

• “Interwoven Identities: Exploring Narrative Intersectionality in I Was Their American Dream by Malaka Garib.” Smita Dabi, Delhi Public School Surat

CSS '21 Presentation Video Live on YouTube

Just uploaded the video I recorded for the Comics Studies Society Conference that was held fully online back in 2021 onto my YouTube channel. It’s about 12 minutes long and is a reading of the comic “The Man in the Mirror: Trans Subjectivity and Lacan in Autobiographical Comics” that is a chapter from my dissertation.

~Elk

TING Zine Expo

Tabling this Friday from 6-9PM at the TAP Centre for Creativity as a part of Tingfest (see the rest of the related events here).

Will be debuting my new comic Foss Follies! If you miss seeing me in person, you can buy it on my Gumroad. But you get a special discount for in-person ;)

A short comic/zine with a bright blue cover reads “Foss Follies: Tales from the South Sound”. There is another copy with a full-page spread open in front of it.

Update: Check out this Article on Tingfest & the Zine Expo on CBC News!

Conference on Walter Benjamin

I helped organize and will be running AV for the Centre for the Study of Theory and Criticism’s conference on Walter Benjamin this Fri-Sat! Hope to see you there. Below is the poster I designed for the event. I also designed some sweet bookmarks, so make sure to swing by and pick some up! Check out the full schedule here.

Bonus: a lil sketch cover of Angelus Novus by Paul Klee for the CFP (Call for Papers) ;)

Zineography

Tabling tomorrow at the downtown London (ON) library! New "zine" I was going to debut ended up clocking in ~60 pages so I decided not to print yet. Instead, I made some new stickers and some pony bead lizard keychains. See you there!

White trans man in a colorful shirt tabling at a zinefest. He has a variety of comic books laid in front of him, and is making a mock-serious pose for the camera.

Adjunct Announcement!

Great news, everyone!

I just heard from the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Western University (UWO) in London, Ontario that I have been hired to teach their undergraduate “Intro to Trans Studies” class this winter term!

I couldn’t be more excited for this opportunity, and hope to work even more with GSWS and the Queer Caucus at Western in the future. It’s nice to be recognized for one’s work, and to get the chance to make a course that focuses on what matters. Onwards and upwards!

-Elk

Chicago Zinefest 2023!!

Come join me this Saturday May 20th from 11-6PM at the Plumber’s Union Hall in Chicago! I’ve got new prints, pins, stickers, and two new, never-before-seen books! Also free “coming out” zines and $30 on-the-spot portrait commissions. Hope to see you soon!

Me and my sister at Chicago Zine Fest! Great day for a fest, excellent turnout and great trades! Thanks, Chicago!

Theory, Science, and Politics Conference at MSU

Excited to announce I’m participating in Michigan State University’s Graduate Conference in Philosophy on March 25th called “Theory, Science, and Politics”! The panel I’m on is “Gender, Race, Class, and Science”, which runs from 4:30PM to 6PM EST.

This time I’m actually presenting a paper, but it will later be integrated into my dissertation as a comic. It’s called “Minimalist Biological Sex and Evolutionary Existentialism”, which will act as an introduction to biological definitions of transness and move to support a diversity-expansive view of biology to affirm transness as a common variation that is not “unnatural” but instead found across animal and plant kingdoms. Will post more once I draw it out!

Thinking Trans // Trans Thinking Conference

Presented at the Thinking Trans // Trans Thinking Conference in Baltimore this Friday, October 28th. Check out the final program here!

Was really great to return to ideas around the philosophy of time and advocating for four-dimensionalism from a queer/trans and disability studies lens.

If you’d like to read my comic presentation, click here!

Canzine 2022!

Please join me this Saturday, October 1st at the Toronto Reference Library (@789 Yonge St, Toronto) from 10AM-5PM EST for the world-famous Canzine, hosted by Broken Pencil!

You can check out the schedule here, and my booth is right by the bathroom if you head straight into the main space! I’ve got a brand new book out and some nice reprints of some classics. Come see me at the library this weekend! <3

SFU Interdisciplinary Graduate Symposium Presentation

Hello, all! Please join me this Friday for my comics presentation on “Crip/Queer Temporalities and Potentials for Futurity” at the Simon Fraser University Humanities Interdisciplinary Graduate Symposium: Transformation and Change. It is both in-person and virtual, check out the whole schedule here.

Working on some great stuff for my dissertation expanding upon research completed in Jeremy Colangelo’s Disability Studies course at the Theory Centre this past year. Thank you for the inspiration and encouragement, Jeremy!

See you soon,

Elk

Comics Studies Society Virtual Conference

This August I’ll be presenting a new comic as another unfolding branch of my Trans Metaphysics project slash PhD research at the Comics Studies Society virtual conference, entitled Re/Building Community! I’ll be presenting on Day 1, August 6th, in session #7 on a panel called Graphic Identities. I’ll be presenting a short comic called The Man in the Mirror: Trans Subjectivity and Lacan in Autobiographical Comics, which will discuss issues surrounding how the self’s subjectivities are presented trans-authored comics. Registration for the conference is FREE so you can sign up now here on the CSS website if you’d like to come! My panel will be between 2:45-4:00PM CST on Friday August 6th, hope to see you there! I’ll be posting the completed comic here after the conference is over. If otherwise interested, check out the whole program on the CSS website, linked here. Looking forward to the panel!

Collective Conscience #4 Kickstarter!

Got invited to be a part of the fourth Push/Pull member anthology, Collective Conscience #4, which is up on Kickstarter now! Push/Pull Press, run by Push/Pull comics maven Maxx Follis-Goodkind, is putting out a massive book release that you can help fund on Kickstarter! I threw five pages in the ring with an autobio comic I made on a funky dream I recently had. Other artists featured in the anthology include R. Thies, David Lasky, Seth Goodkind, Maxx Follis-Goodkind, Valerie Niemeyer (cover), Sarah Maloney, Julia Wald, Megan Delyani, Vladimir Verano, Lurn Maxwell, Danielle Mapes, and Jon Garaizar. You can back the kickstarter now at this link, or read just my comic here on my website. Physical copies should be sold on Push/Pull’s website and at their brick and mortar store, and I should be selling some as well on my Storenvy by this Fall. Thanks, Push/Pull!

Left: Vladimir Verano; Right: David Lasky

Digital (Im)materialities Conference

I had the pleasure of being invited to present a new comic on Lacan and trans self-identification at Concordia University’s Digial (Im)materialities Conference, organized by the 1st year MA cohort in Media Studies. It was a blast! You can read the full comic I made and presented on my website or on theirs.

The conference was presented virtually from May 25-27, and I participated in a panel discussion and Q&A that was absolutely delightful. Thanks so much to the organizers, once again, and I hope to come back next year!

To check out the whole conference website, click here.

ICAF Virtual Conference Presentation

Presented my research yesterday at ICAF, the International Comic Arts Forum conference! Had a lovely roundtable discussion with manga scholar Deborah Shamoon, facilitated by Biz Nijdam and Frank Bramlett. Sadly, fellow presenter Jakub Jankowski couldn’t make it, but you can still check out his presentation on the ICAF website, as well as Deborah Shamoon’s presentation, here.
You can see the blog post I wrote about my work, 4dtime.space, here, and watch my presentation and the roundtable below. Thanks so much for having me, ICAF, it was a blast!

VCS Symposium Presentation

Join me for the virtual VCS Symposium, celebrating outgoing masters’ student’s research at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Visual and Critical Studies program.

Below is a link to my presentation that you can view on YouTube, on 4dtime.space, my newest comic, which is an interactive website on the philosophy of time. Enjoy!