ABSTRACT

This edited collection explores how the relationship between comic art and feminism has been shaped by global, transnational, and local trends, curating analyses of multinational comic art that encompass themes of gender, sexuality, power, vulnerability, assault, abuse, taboo, and trauma.

The chapters illuminate in turn the defining features of the aesthetics, materiality, and thematic content of their source material – often expressed with humorous undertones of self-reflection or social criticism – as well as recurring strategies of visualising and narrating female experiences. Broadening the research perspective of feminist comics to include national comics cultures peripheral to the cultural centers of Anglo-American, Franco-Belgian, and Japanese comics, the anthology explores how the dominant narrative or history of canonical works can be challenged or deconstructed by local histories of comics and feminism and their transnational connections, and how local histories complement or challenge the current understanding of the relationship between feminism and comic art.

This is an essential collection for scholars and students in comics studies, women and gender studies, media studies, and literature.

part I|44 pages

Swedish feminist comics artists

chapter 2|23 pages

Swedish feminist comics and cartoons at the turn of the millennium

Joanna Rubin Dranger and Åsa Grennvall (Schagerström) 1

chapter 3|19 pages

A woman’s place (in the panel)

Positioning and framing in comics by Nina Hemmingsson and Lotta Sjöberg

part II|68 pages

Gender, sex, and sexuality in German-language comics

chapter 4|22 pages

A brief history of girlsplaining?

Reading Klengel, Patu, and Schrupp with Strömquist. Or: Reflecting visualities of gender and feminism in German-language comics

chapter 5|22 pages

“What’s in a name?”

Anke Feuchtenberger’s roses and the mythic methodologies of her feminist comic art

chapter 6|22 pages

For sex-positivity?

Potential and limits of representing sex and sexuality in Ulli Lust’s comics across genres

part III|42 pages

Non-binary and queer expression in comics

chapter 7|22 pages

Strategies of ambiguity

Non-binary figurations in German-language comics

part IV|46 pages

Addressing violence in Finnish comics

chapter 9|24 pages

Feminist education and empowerment

The individual and the collective in Emmi Nieminen and Johanna Vehkoo’s comic on online violence

part V|39 pages

Memoir and remembering in Polish and Russian comics

chapter 11|22 pages

“After all, we must be our own heroines”

The power of feminism, Fun Home, and form in Wanda Hagedorn’s graphic memoir Totalnie Nie Nostalgia: Memuar

chapter 12|15 pages

Staring back at history

Varvara Pomidor and Russian comics