ABSTRACT
This chapter examines graphic texts of girlhood, a flexible archive of visual-verbal narratives in which the girl is the primary subject and in which violence is central. This is necessary because violence does not discriminate by age. Graphic texts of girlhood invite an analysis of how education and violence are negotiated, recuperated, and reframed. The term education focuses broadly on what one knows, whereas schooling refers to mechanisms of formal learning that seek to teach conformity, the sorting of students into social structures through grades and other mechanisms, and instruction in learning how to defer to authority. The child in educational discourse remains an idealized character, one who can be trained through "good influences" into something else. For some, like Lynda Barry, school can be a partial or temporary refuge from an education in violence, but not reliably so—sometimes school is the location of harm. The chapter also presents an overview of key concepts discussed in this book.
