A new feature for Comics Academe! This post will be updated as needed. Sometimes interesting Calls For Papers and Calls For Submissions come across my radar, and I need to share them with the incredible women I know who are in academia (or who are, like myself, academia-adjacent). CFPs are organized in order of deadlines…
Comics Academe: Teaching Ms. Marvel Part 2
This is part two of my account of teaching G. Willow Wilson’s Ms. Marvel to honor students at a large southern university. Part one can be found here.
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (in Comics Academia)
June 2015. The run-up to my first conference abroad as an official comics scholar — and I don’t want to go. I’m panic-crying after reading a chain of emails which, on the face of it, have little to do with me. Short background: we were supposed to have a panel on Charlie Hebdo. A month before…
Book Review: Wide Awake in Slumberland
Wide Awake in Slumberland: Fantasy, Mass Culture, and Modernism in the Art of Winsor McCay Katherine Roeder University Press of Mississippi January 1, 2013 Given the current situation of newspaper comics, it’s sometimes hard to believe that a century ago they were big business, wildly popular, and the source of some of the most innovative…
Comics Academe: Teaching Ms. Marvel – Part One
Last semester I taught the first volume of Ms. Marvel in my honor’s multicultural literature class. Ms. Marvel was perfect for my class, which centered on how minorities used fantastic fiction to show disfranchisement and how old tropes become new when filtered through a different perspective. Superman and Batman are iconic, and that’s a lot…
Comics Academe: How To Write a Comics Dissertation
Out there, somewhere, is a woman who writes about comics who wants to turn that writing to a comics dissertation or thesis, or at least I sure hope there is! The field is wide open and ready for more. For the uninitiated, a dissertation or thesis is the long essay or project that serves as…
A (Re) Introduction to Comics Academe and Call for Submissions
A little over six months ago, I was approached by the fantastic WWAC editorial team about bringing back Comics Academe. Comics Academe was how I came to be a part of this amazing team of women writing about comics, and I am so appreciative for the opportunity to invite more women who are or have been…
The Apocalypse Isn’t The End of the World: Ragnarök and Reading Comics Narratives
After the initial media head-scratching about the announced title “Thor 3: Ragnarok,” people have latched on to the idea that the 2016 Thor movie will be about the end of the world. As a religion scholar, I have a hundred things to say about this! I’ll give you a few pointers for watching the end…
Katherine Tanski’s Teaching Comics Part 2: The Amazing Spider-Man
This is part two of my retrospective/nostalgia journey through my time as a graduate student teaching comics in the “early days.” Part one, my love letter to Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics can be found here.
Comics Academe: How Do You Teach Comics?
This post is the first of two Comics Academe pieces from guest writer Katherine Tanski — I’d introduce her fully, but she does a good job of that for herself. My name is Kate, and I’m a recovering academic. Like all good recovering academics, I feel the need to share my experiences and impart (what I…
The Tangled Relationship Between Religion and Comics (Part Two)
In part one of this tangle, I talked about four ways I conceive of the relationship between comics and religion: comics as religion, comics in religion, religion in comics, and religion and comics in dialogue. In this month’s installation, I’ll give you second two categories (religion in comics and religion and comics in dialogue)—but be…
The Tangled Relationship Between Comics and Religion (Part One)
My cocktail party introduction of myself is basically, “I’m a religion scholar working on a dissertation that uses a comics to interpret religious text.” Maybe it’s not the smoothest handshake, but it’s a place to start. When I tell people this, I occasionally get quizzical looks from strangers who wonder how comics relate to religion…