In my dissertation, I bring together the fields of comics theory, biopolitics, and queer theory in order to read contemporary coming-of-age graphic novels that represent characters (and sometimes lives) at the margins. Coming-of-age graphic novels in this category often depict complex engagements with trauma and history, and couple those depictions with the loss of attachments: the subjects represented in these texts usually do not belong. I make a case for productive spaces inside of the unbelonging represented in my chosen texts. In Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, Alison finds multiple nodes of attachment with her deceased father through the process of writing his history. Importantly, none of those attachments require that she forgive him for past violences, or that she overwrite his life in order to shift focus onto the positive. Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s Skim features a protagonist, Skim, who is rendered an outcast because of her body, her hobbies, and eventually her process of mourning. Skim carves out a life that is survivable for her, and resists the compulsion to perform happiness while she does it. Charles Burns’s Black Hole depicts a group of teens who are excommunicated from their suburb after contracting a disfiguring, sexually transmitted disease, and who take to the woods in order to build a miniature, ad-hoc society for themselves. I concentrate on the question of precarity, and notice that safety and stability have a strong correlation with gender and sexuality: women and queers are overrepresented at the margins. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In my dissertation, I bring together the fields of comics theory, biopolitics, and queer theory in order to read contemporary coming-of-age graphic novels that represent characters (and sometimes lives) at the margins. I focus, especially, on the way that people who are marginalized come to be that way, and I come to the conclusion that marginalized people suffer losses are that tied to different kinds of trauma. Sometimes those traumas are historical: like slavery, or internment. Sometimes they are personal, like ostracization from one’s community. And, finally, sometimes trauma comes from social systems: some subjects are pushed to the margins of society by the same forces that bring others into it. In the case of all of those types of trauma, I find a possibility for community: if people are sometimes marginalized, they are often resilient. The bulk of my dissertation tries to find where exclusions end, and make-shift communities begin.

My research demonstrates how Othering practices affect the cultural status of the comics form. Comics frequently rely upon Othering practices such as stereotype when representing minority characters. This tendency contributes to the low cultural status of comics throughout the better part of the last century. In recent years, however, comics artists have cultivated revisioning techniques that challenge the use of Othering practices in comics. These efforts represent an important step in the push toward what is now known as the comics-as-literature movement, which Scott McCloud believes will allow the next generation of comics readers and artists to accept the idea that “comics can yield a body of work worthy of study and meaningfully represent the life, times and world-view of its author” (Reinventing 10). Even as Othering practices in comics create negative perceptions, these same practices, ironically, provide comics artists with the necessary mechanisms to undermine or revise these negative perceptions and to move comics into the literary arena. The primary mechanism that I focus on in this project is the denotation/connotation relationship. In “Rhetoric of the Image,” Roland Barthes -- speaking about advertising images -- suggests that “the denoted image naturalizes the symbolic message, it innocents the semantic artifice of connotation” (“Rhetoric” 45). Building on Barthes’ work, I demonstrate how the comics image uses the denotative component in visual representations of minorities to naturalize symbolic messages (connotations) that project inferiority. This is how comics create and perpetuate Otherness. At the same time, by interrogating the denotation/connotation relationship, contemporary comics artists have been able to undermine this naturalization process and expose the misconceptions that are inherent within representations of the Other in comics. When comics commonly adopt Othering practices, they create what Charles Hatfield refers to as “encrusted connotations” (4), where the reader’s experience of a comics work is deeply affected by the social perceptions that surround comics in general. When the treatment of minorities in comics is based upon outdated stereotypes, for example, readers may assume that comics are a popular art form without literary aspirations, and the readers then treat these comics accordingly. Conversely, when comics artists challenge the encrusted connotations of the form, they undermine these connotations and open the comics readers’ eyes to the possibility that comics can indeed yield a body of work worthy of study. As I demonstrate, this revisioning work of contemporary comics artists is an important component of the comics-as-literature movement. In order to prove this, my work isolates three distinct forms of Othering that comics speak to in a prominent way. By studying the manner in which comics represent women, racial minorities and geeks, I develop the pattern by which Othering practices contribute to the cultural status of comics art. Each chapter isolates touchstone texts with regard to minority representation (Wonder Woman as gender representation, Happy Hooligan and Luke Cage as racial representation, Clark Kent as geek representation, etc.) in order to establish the formation of encrusted connotations that can then be seen across the medium as a whole. I then show how some of the most prominent and critically acclaimed comics literature of the past twenty years (Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, Persepolis, etc.) enters into a self-reflexive dialogue with these encrusted connotations in order to move beyond them and to help transition the form toward a higher cultural status.

My research demonstrates how Othering practices affect the cultural status of the comics form. Comics frequently rely upon Othering practices such as stereotype when representing minority characters. This tendency contributes to the low cultural status of comics throughout the better part of the last century. In recent years, however, comics artists have cultivated revisioning techniques that challenge the use of Othering practices in comics. These efforts represent an important step in the push toward what is now known as the comics-as-literature movement, which Scott McCloud believes will allow the next generation of comics readers and artists to accept the idea that “comics can yield a body of work worthy of study and meaningfully represent the life, times and world-view of its author” (Reinventing 10). Even as Othering practices in comics create negative perceptions, these same practices, ironically, provide comics artists with the necessary mechanisms to undermine or revise these negative perceptions and to move comics into the literary arena. The primary mechanism that I focus on in this project is the denotation/connotation relationship. In “Rhetoric of the Image,” Roland Barthes -- speaking about advertising images -- suggests that “the denoted image naturalizes the symbolic message, it innocents the semantic artifice of connotation” (“Rhetoric” 45). Building on Barthes’ work, I demonstrate how the comics image uses the denotative component in visual representations of minorities to naturalize symbolic messages (connotations) that project inferiority. This is how comics create and perpetuate Otherness. At the same time, by interrogating the denotation/connotation relationship, contemporary comics artists have been able to undermine this naturalization process and expose the misconceptions that are inherent within representations of the Other in comics. When comics commonly adopt Othering practices, they create what Charles Hatfield refers to as “encrusted connotations” (4), where the reader’s experience of a comics work is deeply affected by the social perceptions that surround comics in general. When the treatment of minorities in comics is based upon outdated stereotypes, for example, readers may assume that comics are a popular art form without literary aspirations, and the readers then treat these comics accordingly. Conversely, when comics artists challenge the encrusted connotations of the form, they undermine these connotations and open the comics readers’ eyes to the possibility that comics can indeed yield a body of work worthy of study. As I demonstrate, this revisioning work of contemporary comics artists is an important component of the comics-as-literature movement. In order to prove this, my work isolates three distinct forms of Othering that comics speak to in a prominent way. By studying the manner in which comics represent women, racial minorities and geeks, I develop the pattern by which Othering practices contribute to the cultural status of comics art. Each chapter isolates touchstone texts with regard to minority representation (Wonder Woman as gender representation, Happy Hooligan and Luke Cage as racial representation, Clark Kent as geek representation, etc.) in order to establish the formation of encrusted connotations that can then be seen across the medium as a whole. I then show how some of the most prominent and critically acclaimed comics literature of the past twenty years (Maus, Jimmy Corrigan, Persepolis, etc.) enters into a self-reflexive dialogue with these encrusted connotations in order to move beyond them and to help transition the form toward a higher cultural status.

José Luque (Perú)-Moderador / Jose Antonio Vilca (Perú) - Panelista / Evento inugural del mes de los comics en UPC Cultural

Jose Antonio Vilca (Perú) - Moderador / Ariel Olivetti (Argentina) - Panelista / Martin Canale (Argentina) - Panelista / Se hará un recuento de las experiencias personales y compartidas, como artistas de comics y como escultor de las más impresionantes esculturas de cultura pop, asi como su trabajo en conjunto para la empresa americana Side Show.

Feminist rhetorics need to move us from inclusion to transformation: instead of "including" more and more marginalized groups into the scholarly status quo, or "including" comics into methods of analysis that we already use, we need to transform our practices themselves. Seeing comics research as an expedition into comics doesn't work. The spatial metaphor is failing because it's analogous to a takeover in the colonial sense. I center the both/and experience of being a producer of comics and analyst of them. Drawing from a critical reading of my own comic, I describe "the disobedient how," a way of learning from transgressive models. I argue that instead of "collecting" comics, decolonial feminist methodology asks that we "attend" comics through listening, experiencing, and having a relationship with them and their creators. As Shawn Wilson's work suggests, knowledge lies in relationships. I use this concept to guide an analysis of Lynda Barry's recent comics work as well as her comments during a panel at the Comics: Philosophy and Practice conference. In order for academics to have true knowledge about Barry's work, we must have a right relationship to her and to it, which requires decolonizing our relationship to texts and taking Barry's comics seriously as sources of theory. Next, I argue for scholars to pay closer attention to Alison Bechdel's comics beyond their engagement with her memoir, Fun Home. I describe her participation in queer rhetoric through a close reading of her comic strip Dykes To Watch Out For and her public discussion of her composing practices. Finally, I perform a retrospective of the history of my own comic book, Oh Shit, I'm in Grad School, drawing on (and developing documentation for) personal archives. / Ph. D.

Watchmen has been hailed as revolutionary not only for the literary quality of Alan Moore's script and the precise execution of Dave Gibbon's art, but also for the novel's successful exploration of sophisticated subject matter and realistic moral conflict. Perhaps the most interesting question Watchmen forces us to consider is why an individual would put on the costume and don the mask, and how such a constructed persona affects the individual psychologically and morally. For those heroes that came before, the compulsion to fight crime was often an in-born ideology of justice. But for Moore's Watchmen, we find that even superheroes are corruptible, flawed, imperfect, and even (more than) a little crazy. In the wake of what is arguably one of the most influential superhero novels published to date, the comics industry saw a rise in the popularity of anti-heroes like Moore's, but it wasn't until the 1991 creation of Marvel's Deadpool that fans saw exactly what it means to be a hero in the post-atomic, post-Vietnam age. Through self-reflexivity, genre deconstruction, and dark hysteria, Deadpool shows us that it isn't so easy to walk the straight line of the righteous, and that sometimes it's much easier to submit to the madness of a chaotic, morally ambiguous world. / Master of Arts

The thesis contributes to the theory of translation of comics. In the first part, it outlines the development of both German and Czech comics and defines individual aspects of comics translation, taking into account not only language but also images and typography. Regarding language, the thesis looks specifically at balloons, captions, and other characteristics playing an important role in translation, such as interjections, inscriptions etc. The thesis also addresses the interdependence of language and visual messages in comics, which is the typical source of comic effects. Apart from the requirements on comics translations set within translation studies, the thesis also presents the attitudes of publishers and their editorial practices. Based on questionnaires distributed among publishers, we can conclude that they adopt a comprehensive attitude to translation of comics, not only taking into consideration balloons and captions, but also creating favourable conditions to meet the translation studies requirements. Based on the general findings, the thesis analyzes two translations of German comics into Czech. The analysis of their language aspects employs Katharina Reiß's model, images and typographic aspects are analyzed using Delabastita's model. The analyses show considerable differences in...

Master's thesis analyzes critical reviews of Anglo-American comic books which were published in Czech Republic. The purpose is to describe contemporary Czech critique scene and to search for tendencies of the reviewers. To do so four comic books were chosen: TOP 10, Sin City 1: The Hard Goodbye, The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and the Czech edition of Batman: The Killing Joke. In the next phase critical reviews were looked up in web pages: Fantasy Planet, Komiksárium, Comics-blog, Neviditelný pes, Daemon and XB-1 magazine. Magazine Host and Lidové noviny newspapers with it's Saturday supplement Orientace represent printed media. There are also two examples of foreign critical reviews from web pages Comics Authority and Artbomb.net. Historical development of comics in Czechoslovakia and in the USA and Great Britain is described between years 1945 and 1989. The purpose is to find moments of mutual influence.

In the aftermath of the failed revolution of 1848, which had been sparked by demands for democracy and constitutional reform, Germany’s princes reluctantly introduced new freedoms regarding print and the right to assembly. However, reactionary forces in governments unwilling to cede power quickly repressed these freedoms, leading to tighter controls on public and private life. Consequently, dispirited citizens clutched at the old Biedermeier ways, withdrawing to an “ill-remembered social order of bygone days” (Shorter 169). It was against this backdrop that the illustrated works of Wilhelm Busch (1832–1908) appeared in the popular Bilderbogen (“picture broadsheets”) of the day, and later as stand-alone Bildergeschichten (“picture stories”), using satire and symbolic inversion to mock German society by skewering assorted political, social, and cultural sacred cows. The aim of my dissertation is as follows. I will start by examining Busch’s use of symbolic inversion as a way of implying a shift in power between figures of authority and the disgruntled “second-class” citizens of Biedermeier society: women and children. Next, I will examine how Busch’s animal characters, particularly apes with their close resemblance to mankind, mock human pretensions of biological superiority. Finally, I will show how objects meant to serve their human “masters” overpower them, even in their homes, suggesting that there was no refuge from the vagaries of a rapidly changing world. Key to my analysis will be an exploration of the mechanism of “inside out” and “upside down,” described by Mikhail Bakhtin with regards to the carnival scenes of Gargantua et Pantagruel, as a sanctioned and mocking way of questioning the power of the state and its institutions. Along the way, I will compare and contrast Busch’s picture stories with similar strips in the Fliegende Blätter, in order to prove how groundbreaking the author’s exposé of nineteenth-century German society truly was. As I explore the synergy between image and word, I will demonstrate how Busch’s use of symbolic inversion is slyly subversive, undermining established authority in the political, social, and cultural arenas, and providing a safety valve in the form of humour that transcends the boundaries of class, education, and gender. / Thesis (Ph.D, German) -- Queen's University, 2013-04-19 14:01:35.498