Serial Selves: Identity and Representation in Autobiographical Comics

by Frederik Byrn Kohlert

Overview

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.

As the first comparative study of how comics artists from a wide range of backgrounds use the form to write and draw themselves into cultural visibility, Serial Selves will be of interest to anyone interested in the current boom in autobiographical comics, as well as issues of representation in comics and visual culture more broadly.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813592251
Publisher:	Rutgers University Press
Publication date:	03/15/2019
Edition description:	None
Pages:	242
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	16 - 18 Years

About the Author

FREDERIK BYRN KØHLERT is a lecturer in the School of Art, Media, and American Studies at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, United Kingdom. He is the author of The Chicago Literary Experience: Writing the City, 1893-1953.
 

Table of Contents

Introduction Serial Selves 1

1 Female Grotesques: The Unruly Comics of Julie Doucet 23

2 Working It Through: Trauma and Visuality in the Comics of Phoebe Gloeckner 54

3 Queer as Style: Ariel Schrag's High School Comic Chronicles 84

4 Staring at Comics: Disability and the Body in Al Davison's The Spiral Cage 123

5 Stereotyping the Self: Toufic El Rassi's Arab in America 157

Conclusion: Making an Issue of Representation 188

Acknowledgments 197

Notes 201

Bibliography 211

Index 223

Editorial Reviews

"Acutely attuned to the formal properties of autobiographical comics, Frederik Byrn Køhlert argues that the drawn 'I' produces new knowledge about trauma, bodies, temporality, power, and resistance. Serial Selves persuasively demonstrates the complexity of autobiographical comics and their undeniable importance as a cultural and autobiographical form."
 

author of Tainted Witness: Why We Doubt What Women Say About Their Lives - Leigh Gilmore

"Serial Selves leaps past the existing scholarship on autobiographical comics, bringing a fuller sense of context and more diverse corpus. Persistently, and brilliantly, Køhlert reminds us that the choice between formal rigor and social engagement is a false one, and that comics studies at its best achieves both. Synthesizing a tremendous range of research—from autobiography theory, trauma theory, gender studies, disability studies, and other fields—he approaches neglected or misunderstood works, asks tough questions, and, in every case, uses close formal analysis to unpack issues of subjectivity and identity formation. A watershed work."

author of Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby - Charles Hatfield

"In this engrossing and tremendously insightful book, Køhlert deftly analyzes comics as a visual form with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, paying close attention to the myriad ways comics authors use the formal elements unique to comics to express meaning and embody their intentions. By discussing these five authors in concert, Køhlert not only sheds new light on their individual works, but he also points to the potential for the medium to serve as a powerful vehicle to represent issues around the body. This is an invaluable text for anyone teaching comics."

author of Unflattening - Nick Sousanis

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