Comics and Visual Culture 2018, a symposium, will take place at California State University, Northridge on Saturday, March 10, at the University Student Union from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Put on by the Comics@CSUN group, this free, public event highlights student research into comic art, visual media, and popular culture. It is a sequel to a symposium of the same name in 2016.

CVC 2018 is a free, public event, running all day All members of the CSUN community, as well as fans and students of comics from greater Los Angeles and beyond, are encouraged to attend. No preregistration or RSVP is required.

Comics and Visual Culture 2018 will feature student presenters drawn from CSUN and three other CSUs — Cal Poly, CSU Fullerton, and San Francisco State — as well as Colorado College, Williams College in Massachusetts, and Portland State University in Oregon.

These speakers will share research on topics ranging from Batman, “Star Wars” and Japanese manga to depictions of gender and disability, to memory, to the politics of comics about Iran and Puerto Rico, and more.

The symposium will begin with a keynote by Damian Duffy of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and John Jennings from UC Riverside, co-creators of the recent bestseller “Kindred: A Graphic Novel Adaptation” (2017), based upon Octavia Butler’s classic science fiction novel.

Activities also will include a keynote by Susan Kirtley, director of composition and of comics studies at Portland State University and author of “Lynda Barry: Girlhood through the Looking Glass” (2012).

CSUN cinema and television arts professor Frances Gateward and English professor Charles Hatfield are co-organizing Comics and Visual Culture on behalf of the interdisciplinary Comics@CSUN group.

The symposium, Hatfield said, signals CSUN’s commitment to Comics Studies.

“This is an area that many of our students care about, at the crossroads of so many disciplines and topics: art, media, cinema, literature, and more,” he said. “We’re proud to host so many student researchers in this field.”

Comics and Visual Culture 2018 is sponsored by CSUN’s Instructionally Related Activities Fund and Distinguished Visiting Speakers Program; the University Student Union; the CSUN Departments of Cinema and Television Arts and of English; the English Department Alumni Association; the CSUN College of Humanities; and Comics@CSUN.

For more information, contact Charles Hatfield at 818-677-3416 or charles.hatfield@csun.edu, or visit the Comics@CSUN website, www.csun.edu/comics.