عنوان

The Graphic Memoir and the Cartoonist's Memory

Number

TL49049

.Language of Text, Soundtrack etc

انگلیسی

Title Proper

The Graphic Memoir and the Cartoonist's Memory

General Material Designation

[Thesis]

First Statement of Responsibility

Alice Claire Burrows

Subsequent Statement of Responsibility

Harvey, Robert

Name of Publisher, Distributor, etc.

State University of New York at Stony Brook

Date of Publication, Distribution, etc.

2016

Specific Material Designation and Extent of Item

256

Text of Note

Committee members: Gabbard, Krin; Guins, Raiford; Hajdu, David; Petrey, Sandy

Text of Note

Place of publication: United States, Ann Arbor; ISBN=978-1-369-38729-2

Dissertation or thesis details and type of degree

Ph.D.

Discipline of degree

Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies

Body granting the degree

State University of New York at Stony Brook

Text preceding or following the note

2016

Text of Note

Graphic memoirs embrace the vibrancy and rich social and artistic history of comics, and the intimacy and imagination of autobiographies. Spanning from Justin Green's 1972 Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary to Riad Sattouf's 2014 The Arab of the Future, autobiographical comics capture the fragmented, subjective, and visual nature of memory. Reacting against the Comics Code, underground comics introduced the concept of portraying oneself in comics, a practice that achieved mainstream validation in 1992 when Art Spiegelman won the Pulitzer Prize for Maus. Drawing from classic comic strips like Richard Outcault's The Yellow Kid and comic books like the salacious EC Comics, cartoonists integrate and reimagine comics techniques, evoking nostalgia but also disrupting expectations. The potential for image and text to be both collaborative and conflicting is conducive to narratives of trauma, illness, and isolation because there is an expanded opportunity for representation. Marianne Hirsch and Gillian Whitlock both argue that there is an ethical imperative for verbal-visual storytelling, especially in light of contemporary censorship, war, and family trauma. My dissertation explores the ways in which graphic memoirs have been utilized to tell significant and overlooked stories, and ways in which the reader is responsible for engaging with the cartoonist and protagonist through the graphic memoir. Specifically, I examine the ways in which the self-portrait, utilization of panels and gutters, depiction of silence, and inclusion of photographs communicate the personal narrative, and consider how these elements have evolved over the history of Western comics. Stories of personal trauma depicted through comics allow for a particular subjectivity and engagement, inspired by a contemporary medium that promises to challenge the limits of storytelling and autobiography.

Comparative literature; Cartoons; Ethics; Subjectivity; Story telling; Narratives; Art; Silence; Collaboration; Memory; Reading; Multimedia communications

Subject Term

Language, literature and linguistics;Communication and the arts;Comics;Graphic memoir;Memory

Wide, Thomas

Harvey, Robert

Subdivision

Comparative Literary and Cultural Studies

State University of New York at Stony Brook

Call Number

1845003808; 10192689

Electronic name

p

[Thesis]

276903

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Y