Comics scholarship has found its place in academia and is now expanding to include not only traditional academic papers and monographs about graphic novels and other comic formats, but scholarship in the form of comics themselves. From the 2015 Digital Humanities Quarterly special issue on the topic and the dissertation Unflattening written in comic form and published in 2015, to a short comic included in the most recent issue of Transgender Studies Quarterly, this method of presentation is gaining ground. While this method has its benefits for certain projects, one is left to wonder if this trend is merely popular because of its recent introduction to our field.
This paper aims to review the current field of comic scholarship both to identify the best uses for this form of commentary and to discuss the boundaries of scholarship versus entertainment. This dual approach will allow me to consider not only how we define both comics and scholarship in the current field, but also how these techniques can improve our inquiry. At the same time, this consideration will force interrogation of comics appearing in scholarly forums, not only considering if it was a fitting medium but the ultimate role of the comic, as critical discourse or creative diversion.
About the presenterCatherine Ann Winters-Michaud
Catherine Winters-Michaud earned her Ph.D. from the University of Rhode Island in May 2020. Her dissertation, “The Mark of the Vanishing Reading: Interdiegetic Interaction in Multimodal Narrative,” argues that, though books and literature are changing, these changes focus on what needs books can fulfill, and that the reader is not an endangered species, threatened by changes in the media landscape, but is evolving and chooses to read print books when those books best fulfill their needs. Her research focuses on multimodal contemporary American literature and includes novels, comics, and other narrative literature. Catherine received her MA from Simmons College in Boston.