Full Description
Intersectional Feminist Readings of Comics collects several theoretically informed close reading of comics and graphic literature that apply an intersectional feminist lens to the interpretation of several contemporary North American graphic narratives.
The essays examine use a range of interpretive lenses drawn from theoretical models used in contemporary aesthetics, media studies, and literary criticism to analyze mainstream figures like DC's Catwoman and Marvel's Miss America and Doctor Strange, to contextualize historical and speculative comics by Indigenous American illustrators, and to explicate autography by critically lauded Jewish, queer and female cartoonists. In the first half of the book, the chapters examine ways in which superhero comics and the cinematic and televisual adaptations thereof, reify, revise and reject gender parity, systemic misogyny and heteropatriarchy through visual and textual rhetorics of representation. In the second part of the volume, the chapters look at the ways that feminist interpretive practices illuminate the radical work undertaken by cartoonists from historically marginalized communities in the U.S. and Canada. Across both halves, readers will find applications of longstanding feminist critical traditions, like ecofeminism, as well as new intersectional extrapolations of narratology, autobiographical studies, and visual rhetoric, which have been applied to the selected comics in insightful and innovative ways.
This is a lively and varied collection suitable for students and scholars in gender studies, cultural studies, media studies and literary studies.
Contents
Introduction: Drawn to and from gender: some of what it means to critique comics through intersectional feminist theory Sandra Cox
Part I: Racialized Heroes and Sexualized Villains
1. Contested adaptations: legacies of orientalism, the she-hero, and Hollywood's diversity aesthetic in Marvel's Doctor Strange (2016) Michael Reinhard and Monica Roxanne Sadler
2. On the fringes and tassels of respectability: Catwoman and censoring the femme form A. Luxx Mishou
3. Queer, Latina, and Punching Nazis: a New America breaking borders Ande Davis
4. Unweaving the World: militant eco-feminism in the anti-fairy tale Beautiful Darkness Shane Gomes
Part II: National Histories and Personal Autographies
5. Drawn into being: the transformative voices of Native American and First Nations Women in comics and visual narratives Nicole Dib
6. Comics and gendered subjectivity: the multifaceted truth of Alison Bechdel's graphic memoirs Cody Shrum
7 Love, lust and lucre in Leela Corman's Unterzakhn Alex Link
