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The School of Art, Media and American Studies (AMA) has a thriving interdisciplinary research environment in the growing field of Comics Studies.
Faculty members from both AMA and other Schools have published widely on many different aspects of Comics Studies, and we have special research strengths in autobiographical comics, superheroes, comics and politics, formalist comics studies, horror comics, censorship, gender and sexuality in comics, and transmedia adaptations including superhero movies.
In addition, the School also hosts a regular series of Comics Studies research talks by invited external speakers, which connect us to the wider academic community in the field.
Members of the faculty also frequently attend major Comics Studies conferences, including those put on by the Comics Studies Society, the International Graphic Novel and Comics Conference, Comics Forum, the International Bande Dessinée Society, the German Society for Comics Studies, and the Canadian Society for the Study of Comics.
Recent Comics Studies scholarship published by our faculty members includes:
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Serial Selves: Identity and Representation in Autobiographical Comics, by Frederik Byrn Køhlert
Autobiography is one of the most dynamic and quickly-growing genres in contemporary comics and graphic narratives. In Serial Selves, Frederik Byrn Køhlert examines the genre’s potential for representing lives and perspectives that have been socially marginalized or excluded. With a focus on the comics form’s ability to produce alternative and challenging autobiographical narratives, thematic chapters investigate the work of artists writing from perspectives of marginality including gender, sexuality, disability, and race, as well as trauma. Interdisciplinary in scope and attuned to theories and methods from both literary and visual studies, the book provides detailed formal analysis to show that the highly personal and hand-drawn aesthetics of comics can help artists push against established narrative and visual conventions, and in the process invent new ways of seeing and being seen.
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Superheroes on World Screens, edited by Rayna Denison and Rachel Mizsei-Ward
Nominated for the comics industry’s prestigious Eisner Award, this collection by Rayna Denison and Rachel Mizsei-Ward stands out as the first concentrated attempt to think through the meanings and significance of the superhero, not only as a product of culture in the United States, but as a series of local, transnational, and global exchanges in popular media. Through analysis of mainly film, television, and computer screens, contributors offer three challenges to the idea of the “American” superhero: transnational reimagining of superhero culture, emerging local superheroes, and the use of local superheroes to undermine dominant political ideologies. The essays explore the shifting transnational meanings of Doctor Who, Thor, and the Phantom, as these characters are reimagined in world culture. Other chapters chart the rise of local superheroes from India, the Middle East, Thailand, and South Korea. These explorations demonstrate how far superheroes have traveled to inspire audiences worldwide.
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Mise en scène, Acting, and Space in Comics, by Geraint D’Arcy
This book by Geraint D’Arcy explores some of the less frequently questioned ideas which underpin comics creation and criticism. “Mise en scène” is a term which refers to the way in which visual elements work together to create meaning in comics. It is a term that comics have borrowed from cinema, which borrowed it in turn from theatre. But comics are not film and they are not cinema, so how can this term be of any use? If we consider comics to have mise en scène, should not we also ask if the characters in comics act like the characters on film and stage? In its exploration of these ideas, this book also asks what film and theatre can learn from comics.
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Focus on Gender, Sexuality, and Comics (book series), edited by Frederik Byrn Køhlert
This innovative books series edited by Frederik Byrn Køhlert publishes original short-form research in the areas of gender and sexuality studies as they relate to comics cultures past and present. Topics in the series cover printed as well as digital media, mainstream and alternative comics industries, transmedia adaptions, comics consumption, and various comics-associated cultural fields and forms of expression. Gendered and sexual identities are considered as intersectional and always in conversation with issues concerning race, ethnicity, ability, class, age, nationality, and religion. Longer books are published in the companion series Studies in Gender, Sexuality, and Comics.
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Film and Comic Books, edited by Ian Gordon, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister
In Film and Comic Books, edited by Ian Gordon, Mark Jancovich, and Matthew P. McAllister, contributors analyze the problems of adapting one medium to another; the translation of comics aesthetics into film; audience expectations, reception, and reaction to comic book-based films; and the adaptation of films into comics. A wide range of comic/film adaptations are explored, including superheroes (Spider-Man), comic strips (Dick Tracy), realist and autobiographical comics (American Splendor, Ghost World), and photo-montage comics (Mexico’s El Santo). Essayists discuss films beginning with the 1978 Superman. That success led filmmakers to adapt a multitude of comic books for the screen including Marvel's Uncanny X-Men, the Amazing Spider-Man, Blade, and the Incredible Hulk as well as alternative graphic novels such as From Hell, V for Vendetta, and Road to Perdition. Essayists also discuss recent works from Mexico, France, Germany, and Malaysia.
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Rebel Lines: Comics and the Anarchist Imagination, edited by Frederik Byrn Køhlert and Ole Birk Laursen
At least since their modern inception in the late nineteenth century, comics have been deeply entwined with anti-authoritarian politics and resistance. In this special issue edited by Frederik Byrn Køhlert and Ole Birk Laursen, comics have played (and continue to play) a particularly significant role in the history of anarchist thought, whether in the form of satirical cartoons aimed at deflating authority, rousing calls to arms, or visual histories portraying specific instances of anarchist organization. While comics thereby have served as a vehicle for the dissemination of anarchist ideologies, and, conversely, anarchism has provided the ideological fodder for much political cartooning, this special issue represents the first time that scholarly attention has been paid to this connection, and as such represents a major intervention into both fields of study.
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