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

Sun Jul 5 15:59:45 EDT 2020

I’d echo Patrick’s support for Webber’s DUMB (subtitled, Living Without a Voice). It’s wonderful.

I’m not sure I’d consider her disability temporary though; while the severity of her vocal injury certainly lessened over time, unless I’m mistaken, Webber still deals with vocal pain after sustained use to this day. Some of these experiences with continued vocal pain she’s discussed in her webcomic works, as well: https://believermag.com/crip-consciousness/

Beyond the comic, Webber has done an incredible amount of work in support of voice professionals, including her founding the monthly MAW Vocal Arts Showcase in Toronto, ON. I think that, if you choose her include her work, some of the socio-cultural extensions beyond the graphic memoir would make for very interesting conversation about comics and social action!

Zachary J.A. Rondinelli, M.A., B.Ed., B.Mus
Ph.D. Candidate [Educational Studies], Brock University
Secretary-Treasurer, Graduate Student Caucus of the Comics Studies Society

“Comicbook should be written as one word… I want you to remember that. I never want to see the word comicbook written as two words. They are not funny books. They are not comic books, they are comicbooks! Remember that, or incur my wrath.” - Stan Lee
________________________________
From: ComicsStudiesSociety <comicsstudiessociety-bounces+z.rondinelli=outlook.com at lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Patrick D. Holt via ComicsStudiesSociety <comicsstudiessociety at lists.osu.edu>
Sent: Sunday, July 5, 2020 1:57:48 PM
To: Charles Hatfield <charles.hatfield at gmail.com>; discussion list for members of the Comics Studies Society <comicsstudiessociety at lists.osu.edu>
Subject: Re: [Comicsstudiessociety] Disability in Comics seminar: readings, resources you'd recommend?

Late to the party, but Georgia Webber's Dumb could be a good addition to your list! Besides being a really compelling comics memoir, for your purposes it has the benefit of including passages about how to visually represent the invisible disability at hand, a long-term loss of the author's voice. It's worth noting that the disability was a temporary one, and that the author herself doesn't necessarily add to discussions of demographic representation in the field, but the "How do I show this in my comics?" bits are fascinating for narrative, personal, and formal reasons, and they're definitely worth checking out.

Good luck!
Patrick Holt

On Wed, Jul 1, 2020 at 4:34 PM Charles Hatfield via ComicsStudiesSociety <comicsstudiessociety at lists.osu.edu<mailto:comicsstudiessociety at lists.osu.edu>> wrote:

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<https://eur05.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fthatdeafguy.com%2F&data=02%7C01%7C%7C2b047856286844b3e22308d8210f5ef2%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C637295697181612632&sdata=XoE5gdKEYNX2Oy0nyhBFBrVonmZgycBsiZ%2FH2MiNgA4%3D&reserved=0>)
  *   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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