[Comicsstudiessociety] Disability in Comics seminar: readings, resources you'd recommend?

[Charles Hatfield]

Dear CSS colleagues,

I'm reviving my "Disability in Comics" grad course this fall (see attached
flyer), and looking for ways to diversify and update the syllabus.
Recommendations, questions, and discussion are welcome!

This class, FYI, will be entirely online (a first for my grad courses), but
I'm planning synchronous Zoom meetings most weeks, as well as
student-driven discussion launches and weekly online posts around the major
readings. I hope we can maintain the interactive, discussion-driven nature
of an ideal grad seminar. Strategies for doing that would be greatly
appreciated.

If you'd like to know more, or think you might have readings/resources to
recommend, read on!

Here, in roughly the order of use, are the required comics readings my
class did the last time I taught this course, Spring 2017 (readings marked
* were provided to students in PDF via our private, password-protected
Canvas site):

   - Pekar & Warneford, *American Splendour: Transatlantic Comics**
   - Green, *Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary*
   - Bechdel, *Fun Home*
   - Davison, excerpts from *The Spiral Cage**
   - Waid, Rivera & Martin, *Daredevil*, Vol. 1
   - Moore & Willingham, “In Blackest Night,” from *Tales of the Green
   Lantern Corps Annual* #3 (1987)*
   - Drake, Haney & Premiani, “The Doom Patrol,” from *My Greatest
   Adventure* #80 (June 1963)*
   - Kirby & Lee, *X-Men *#1 (Sept. 1963)*
   - Mantlo & Elias, “Death-Walk,” from *Human Fly* #1 (Sept. 1977)*
   - Bell, *El Deafo*
   - Fraction & Aja, *Hawkeye *#19 (Sept. 2014)
   - Lambert, *Annie Sullivan and the Trials of Helen Keller*
   - Daigle & Daigle, *That Deaf Guy *(thatdeafguy.com)
   - Forney, *Marbles*
   - David B., *Epileptic*
   - Dunlap-Shohl, *My Degeneration: A Journey through Parkinson’s*


And here are the critical readings we did (mostly provided via CSUN library
ebooks, library reserves, and PDFs):

   - Adams, Reiss, & Serlin, eds., *Keywords for Disability Studies*
   - Alaniz, *Death, Disability, and the Superhero *(which of course
   inspired some of the above comics readings!)
   - Couser, “Disability, Life Narrative, and Representation”
   - El Refaie, “Life Writing from the Colorful Margins” and  “Picturing
   Embodied Selves”
   - Witek, “Justin Green: Autobiography Meets the Comics”
   - Baynton, “Disability and the Justification of Inequality in American
   History”
   - Garland-Thomson, Chs. One and Two of *Extraordinary Bodies*
   - Mitchell & Snyder, excerpt from *Narrative Prosthesis*, in Davis,
ed., *Disability
   Studies Reader*
   - Scotch, “American Disability Policy in the Twentieth Century”
   - Chute, “Animating an Archive,” in *Graphic Women*
   - Galvan, “Thinking through Thea,” in Foss, Gray, & Whalen, eds.,
*Disability
   in Comic Books and Graphic Narratives*
   - Couser, “Rhetoric and Self-Representation in Disability Memoir”
   - McIlvenny, “The Disabled Male Body ‘Writes/Draws Back’”
   - Williams, “Comics and the Iconography of Illness,” in Czerwiec,
   Williams, et al., *Graphic Medicine Manifesto*
   - Quayson, excerpt from *Aesthetic Nervousness*, in Davis, ed., *Disability
   Studies Reader*
   - Burch, “Reading between the Signs”
   - Nielsen, “Helen Keller and the Politics of Civic Fitness”
   - Dadey, “Breaking Quarantine,” *ImageTexT, *Vol. 7, No. 2, Fall 2013

This time, I'm planning to add Køhlert's chapter on Al Davison from *Serial
Selves*, and some selections from *Uncanny Bodies*, eds. Smith and Alaniz.
We may also use the forthcoming *Comics Studies: A Guidebook*, since this
class will consist mostly of students who haven't studied comics
academically before.

But I'm particularly anxious to update and diversify the readings to deal
more fully with questions of intersectionality. That is, I'd like comics
and critical perspectives that will serve to underscore intersections of
disability with race, class, and sexuality. Recent scholarship that gives
new models of thinking about racialized disability would be esp. helpful.

*Any readings or resources you would recommend?*

PS. If any of you would like to take this discussion off-list, into fine
details, I can provide a full syllabus from the 2017 class, etc.

PPS. I've been having some trouble seeing replies to my CSS listserv
messages, so please forgive any delays! Hopefully I won't miss any replies
this time.

CH

Charles Hatfield

CSU Northridge, Los Angeles
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