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…
A Tale of Comics Academe in a History Department: An Interview with Professor Julian Chambliss
Professor Julian Chambliss’s true origin remains shrouded in mystery but his LinkedIn page tells us that he has been a professor at Rollins College in Florida since 2003. In an interview by Chris Rawlins, Chambliss recounted his first experience teaching with comic books in 2006. As an editor and contributor for a recent compilation of research…
Review: Comics: A Global History, 1968 to the Present
Comics: A Global History, 1968 to the Present promises to be a bit more than it ever could be, while succeeding in being a bit more than one would expect it to be.
Stories from Comics Academe: The Culture of Production in Marvel’s Media Franchises
On May 1, 2014, I attended Derek Johnson’s lecture, “My Hero?: The Practices and Politics of Sharing Worlds in Marvel’s Media Franchises” presented by the University of California at Irvine Humanities Collective. Johnson is a professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who researches identity and hierarchy in the production of…
Academic Secret Identities: Being She-Hulk or Batgirl
Elizabeth Coody is back with her second guest post for Comics Academe! Pitching and drafting this before the Goyer commentary made waves, Elizabeth’s looking at She-Hulk from the perspective that makes most sense to her. Find Elizabeth’s previous Comics Academe entry Christianity, Comics, and the Classroom here, and enjoy the applied fandom below!
Stories from Comics Academe: Visualizing a Story of Cancer’s Culture
What Graphic Novels Tell Us About Cancer Care, Greedy Stories, and the Ethnographic Method On April 30, 2014, I attended a lecture at Soka University in California entitled “What Graphic Novels Tell Us About Cancer Care, Greedy Stories, and the Ethnographic Method” by Juliet McMullin, a professor of anthropology at the University of California-Riverside. Among…
Comics Academe: Christianity, Comics, and the Classroom
Comics! Academics! The Bible?! When I tell people I study the Bible and comics, I never quite know how they’re going to take it. Will they be more offended by the Bible part or the comics part? In my North American context, many people conflate the Bible and its intense study with very conservative Christianity, but…
An introduction to comics academia in the form of a letter to my past self
Dear Past Amanda (upon your graduation from high school), Hang on to your hat! Setting aside the fact that these are all spoilers, let me tell you what’s going to happen next: You’re going to live in a castle (what?!) and during your extensive trawling of the internet, you’ll find out about these things that are today…
Comics Academe: Imposter Syndrome! I Have No Idea What I’m Doing
I wish I could be the type of brilliant academic that feels motivated by the muse, the type that drinks red wine during the day, writing down all of her inspired thoughts in a leather bound journal. Basically Olivia Pope getting her doctorate. I am sure this brilliant academic superhero exists somewhere; she probably did…
Comics Academe
My name is Francesca Lyn, and I am a second year doctoral student in the Media, Art, and Text program at Virginia Commonwealth University. My research interests center on graphic memoirs written by women. I didn’t come to VCU knowing I wanted to study comics. In fact, my path to studying comics is a rather winding one….