ABSTRACT

Performativity, Cultural Construction, and the Graphic Narrative draws on performance studies scholarship to understand the social impact of graphic novels and their sociopolitical function.

Addressing issues of race, gender, ethnicity, race, war, mental illness, and the environment, the volume encompasses the diversity and variety inherent in the graphic narrative medium. Informed by the scholarship of Dwight Conquergood and his model for performance praxis, this collection of essays makes links between these seemingly disparate areas of study to open new avenues of research for comics and graphic narratives. An international team of authors offer a detailed analysis of new and classical graphic texts from Britain, Iran, India, and Canada as well as the United States.

Performance, Social Construction and the Graphic Narrative draws on performance studies scholarship to understand the social impact of graphic novels and their sociopolitical function. Addressing issues of race, gender, ethnicity, race, war, mental illness, and the environment, the volume encompasses the diversity and variety inherent in the graphic narrative medium. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the areas of communication, literature, comics studies, performance studies, sociology, languages, English, and gender studies, and anyone with an interest in deepening their acquaintance with and understanding of the potential of graphic narratives.

part I|70 pages

Mimesis

chapter 2|18 pages

“Did you kill anyone?”

The pathography of PTSD in The White Donkey

chapter 3|19 pages

I don’t have any ancestors, OK? Let’s just drop it

Miss America and (Pan)Latinx representation in Marvel’s America

part II|66 pages

Poiesis

chapter 7|15 pages

“Real men don’t smash little girls”

Inter-hero violence, families, masculinity, and contemporary superheroes

part III|100 pages

Kinesis

chapter 10|18 pages

Graphical, radical women

Revising boundaries, re(image)ining Écriture Feminine in the novels of Bechdel and Satrapi

chapter 11|16 pages

Bridging the gutter

Cultural construction of gender sensitivity in select Indian graphic narratives after Nirbhaya

chapter 12|15 pages

“There Are No Monsters Like Us”

Gothic horror, lesbianism, and the female body in Marguerite Bennett and Ariela Kristantina’s InSEXts

chapter 14|17 pages

A killer rhetoric of alternatives

Re/framing monstrosity in My Friend Dahmer