Women in Marvel Films answers the question “why aren’t there more superheroines on our screens?” Especially when a comics giant like Marvel has successfully churned out so many films featuring male heroes. And when we do get women characters, what kind of role do they play? What agency do they have? Readers aren’t going to…
Teaching Comics with Comics: On Meghan Parker’s Teaching Artfully
I first heard of Teaching Artfully in the second year of my doctoral program. I was just starting to grapple with the idea of drawing my dissertation as a comic and had reached out to Nick Sousanis, the author of Unflattening and the only person who I knew had drawn their dissertation. Nick led…
Rereading Bitch Planet in 2021: Back Off, Karens
I write this on what is the traditional land of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island First Nations. I was introduced to comic books by my father and brother. Comic books are a traditionally male-dominated sphere and women trying to enter into this sphere experience misogyny, gate-keeping, bias and gendered microaggressions; I know this because I…
Comics Academe: 7th Anniversary Retrospective
The first Comics Academe was published 7 years ago yesterday, on January 28th, 2014. Francesca Lyn was at the time a second-year doctoral student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University, and has since then graduated and become a well-known figure in comics studies and a mentor to other graduate students…
Comics Academe: 2020 in Review
To close out 2020, Comics Academe asked contributors to write about the conferences, articles, and books that had the biggest impact on them. They attended virtual conferences and comic cons and read, wrote, and were recognized for groundbreaking work in and around comics studies.
REVIEW: Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel: Militarism and Feminism in Comics and Film
Higher. Faster. Further. More. Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman are icons in comics. Advertised as inspiration for girls and women. Except, sometimes, for me, but I could never articulate why. They both protected people who couldn’t protect themselves. Each is confident and fully realized. They are adult women. It was something… else. And Carloyn Cocca…
I Draw (A Graphic Dissertation), Comics as Method and Holding Environment
Last week, in “I Draw (A Graphic Dissertation), Therefore I Am,” I wrote about how I got to drawing my dissertation, drawing comics as scholarship, and about comics as a way to think. Building on that, this week I want to start with the concept of “holding environments” (term originally coined by Donald Woods Winnicott…
I Draw (A Graphic Dissertation), Therefore I Am
[Editors’ note: In part one of a two-part essay, Ph.D. candidate Kay Sohini writes about drawing a graphic dissertation, comics as scholarship, and comics as thinking. In part two, coming next week, Sohini builds on what she’s written here as she writes about comics as literary affordances and holding environments, key ideas in her graphic…
Reimagining the Personification of Death in Popular Culture
When people learn that I am studying death and comics they will invariably ask if I mean the grim reaper. Usually I say no, because that’s not at all what I’m doing, but sometimes I say yes, just to see where the conversation will go, to find out what they know about the thing that…
ComicCon@Home Teaching With Comics Panels Roundup
Hello! You may have noticed that there was not a Comics Academe this month, and that was because we elected to save this spot to review the Comics Studies and comics education panels at SDCC’s Comic Con @ Home. Well…some of them.
The Making of “The Blue Age of Comic Books”
Two years ago, I was presenting original research at the first annual Comics Studies Society conference. A week after that, I wrote my first WWAC article, in which I wrote about the paper I gave, “The Blue Age of Comic Books,” linking to an early version still (and for the foreseeable future) available online. A…
Community Spaces, Alternative Marketplaces: Indie Comics and Culture
Over the last decade, the growth of independent, “indie,” or creator-owned comics has broadened the comic book landscape and birthed a new wave of creators who aren’t adhering to conventional standards. The demand for non-superhero material from publishers outside of the Big Two (Marvel and DC) has empowered creators to carve out their own space…
