Drawing from Life: Memory and Subjectivity in Comic Art

by Jane Tolmie (Editor)

Overview

Essays that query the roles of trust, truth, and family memoirs in autobiographical comics Essays by Jan Baetens, David M. Ball, Lopamudra Basu, Christopher Bush, Isaac Cates, Michael A. Chaney, Alisia Chase, Sharon O'Brien, Davida Pines, Yaël Schlick, Rachel Trousdale, and Benjamin Widiss Autobiography has seen enormous expansions and challenges over the past decades. One of these expansions has been in comics, and it is an expansion that pushes back against any postmodern notion of the death of the author/subject, while also demanding new approaches from critics. Drawing from Life: Memory and Subjectivity in Comic Art is a collection of essays about autobiography, semiautobiography, fictionalized autobiography, memory, and self-narration in sequential art, or comics. Contributors come from a range of academic backgrounds including English, American studies, comparative literature, gender studies, art history, and cultural studies. The book engages with wellknown figures such as Art Spiegelman, Marjane Satrapi, and Alison Bechdel; with cult-status figures such as Martin Vaughn James; and with lesser-known works by artists such as Frédéric Boilet. Negotiations between artist/writer/ body and drawn/written/text raise questions of how comics construct identity, and are read and perceived, requiring a critical turn towards theorizing the comics' viewer. At stake in comic memoir and semi-autobiography is embodiment. Remembering a scene with the intent of rendering it in sequential art requires nonlinear thinking and engagement with physicality. Who was in the room and where? What was worn? Who spoke first? What images dominated the encounter? Did anybody smile? Man or mouse? Unhinged from the summary paragraph, the comics artist must confront the fact of the flesh, or the corporeal world, and they do so with fascinating results. Jane Tolmie, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, is associate professor of gender studies and cultural studies, cross-appointed to English at Queen's University. Find her at http://www.queensu.ca/gnds/tolmie.php

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781496802644
Publisher:	University Press of Mississippi
Publication date:	01/21/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	300
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Jane Tolmie, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, is associate professor of gender studies and cultural studies, cross-appointed to English at Queen's University. Find her at http://www.queensu.ca/gnds/tolmie.php.

Table of Contents

Introduction: If a Body Meet a Body Jane Tolmie vii

Allusive Confessions: The Literary Lives of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home David M. Ball 3

What Is an Experience?: Selves and Texts in the Comic Autobiographies of Alison Bechdel and Lynda Barry Yaël Schlick 26

Animal Subjects of the Graphic Novel Michael A. Chaney 44

Uncaging and Reframing Martin Vaughn-James's The Cage Jan Baetens 67

Comics as Non-Sequential Art: Chris Ware's Joseph Cornell Benjamin Widiss 86

Yukiko's Spinach and the Nouvelle Manga Aesthetic Christopher Bush 112

Memory, Signal, and Noise in the Collaborations of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean Isaac Cates 144

The Graphic Memoir in a State of Exception: Transformations of the Personal in Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers Lopamudra Basu 163

History, Memory, and Trauma: Confronting Dominant interpretations of 9/11 in Alissa Torres's American Widow and Art Spiegelman's In the Shadow of No Towers Davida Pines 185

You Must Look at the Personal Clutter: Diaristic Indulgence, Female Adolescence, and Feminist Autobiography Alisia Chase 207

A Female Prophet?: Authority and Inheritance in Marjane Satrapi Rachel Trousdale 241

Showing the Voice of the Body: Brian Fies's Mom's Cancer, the Graphic Illness Memoir, and the Narrative of Hope Sharon O'Brien 264

Contributors 289

Index 293

Editorial Reviews

"Drawing from Life: Memory and Subjectivity in Comic Art is an excellent collection of essays on such highly regarded memoirists/cartoonists as Alison Bechdel, Lynda Barry, Marjane Satrapi and Art Spiegelman, but the book is especially noteworthy for its inclusion of texts and paradigms less common in comics studies: Martin Vaughn-James's The Cage, sexual trauma, Joseph Cornell's influence on Chris Ware, the manga-influenced work of Frédéric Boilet. The result is a diverse collection that advances and energizes the conversation about comics autobiography."

—Craig Fischer, Appalachian State University

From the Publisher