Title
Wecome & Opening Keynote
Start Date
18-7-2022 8:45 AM
End Date
18-7-2022 9:45 AM
Description
Comic Studies is an interdisciplinary field where sequential art, literature, aesthetics, and theory all work to build on our cultural understanding of not only the medium, but also the world around us. It seeks to help us understand ourselves; explore who we once were and who—heroically—we can be. Heroes, however, not only speak to us but they also speak for us, representing our wants and desires and our deepest secrets. But it is no secret that like comics themselves, the study of comics is overwhelming white and male. Black, minority, and women voices, both within comics and within the field of study, have historically been silenced and overlooked. Whether purposefully or not, the absence of Black people and women and other underrepresented minority groups in the imaginary of the mostly white and male dominated field of comic studies has the profound effect of erasure and devaluing of those underrepresented bodies—just as the comics themselves do. However, Black and other scholars have taken up the mantle of situating comic studies within an intersectional framework, allowing for a broader (racial and gendered, etc.) reading of the texts in the genre. When it comes to my own work, my upcoming book on Storm from the X-Men, Hero Me Not, explores Patricia Hill Collin’s Controlling Images as essential to the representation of black women’s lives within the media, while integrating contemporary racial politics around the way superpowers are often more oppressive to Black people than not having them at all. While comic studies no longer needs to justify itself, moving forward the field has work to do around disrupting the whiteness of American heroes. Libraries could play an important role in this, as their impact on the dissemination of information cannot be understated. Critical Library Studies calls for a critical lens to be applied to “cataloging and classification, access and technical services, instruction and outreach, and management and administration.” In other words, both Comic Studies and libraries (Critical Library Studies) are in a prime position to address injustices in their respective fields, while aiding in progression of this unique and transformative field of study.
Wecome & Opening Keynote
Comic Studies is an interdisciplinary field where sequential art, literature, aesthetics, and theory all work to build on our cultural understanding of not only the medium, but also the world around us. It seeks to help us understand ourselves; explore who we once were and who—heroically—we can be. Heroes, however, not only speak to us but they also speak for us, representing our wants and desires and our deepest secrets. But it is no secret that like comics themselves, the study of comics is overwhelming white and male. Black, minority, and women voices, both within comics and within the field of study, have historically been silenced and overlooked. Whether purposefully or not, the absence of Black people and women and other underrepresented minority groups in the imaginary of the mostly white and male dominated field of comic studies has the profound effect of erasure and devaluing of those underrepresented bodies—just as the comics themselves do. However, Black and other scholars have taken up the mantle of situating comic studies within an intersectional framework, allowing for a broader (racial and gendered, etc.) reading of the texts in the genre. When it comes to my own work, my upcoming book on Storm from the X-Men, Hero Me Not, explores Patricia Hill Collin’s Controlling Images as essential to the representation of black women’s lives within the media, while integrating contemporary racial politics around the way superpowers are often more oppressive to Black people than not having them at all. While comic studies no longer needs to justify itself, moving forward the field has work to do around disrupting the whiteness of American heroes. Libraries could play an important role in this, as their impact on the dissemination of information cannot be understated. Critical Library Studies calls for a critical lens to be applied to “cataloging and classification, access and technical services, instruction and outreach, and management and administration.” In other words, both Comic Studies and libraries (Critical Library Studies) are in a prime position to address injustices in their respective fields, while aiding in progression of this unique and transformative field of study.