Overview

Examines the political and aesthetic gestures embedded in bandes dessinees and graphic novels in order to question the past and the contemporary realities of the French-speaking world. This edited volume sheds light on the unique capacity of the comics medium for redrawing histories and for exploring hidden, forbidden or imagined spaces. Studying a variety of texts from the French-speaking world, it considers how bandes dessinees (BD) and graphic novels can highlight environmental, gender, racial, religious, political and social questions. It also demonstrates how BD can offer readers new perspectives through formal experiment and through reworking and subverting dominant iconographies. The contributions in this volume showcase how the comic medium, through the combination of text and image, engages with notions of voice, power, bias and perspective, and can be used as a pedagogical tool and a form of resistance to discuss diversity, decolonisation, inclusion and social justice issues.

Full Product Details

9781399529297

Table of Contents

Reviews

This engaging collection of essays provides original perspectives on the medium-specific capabilities of graphic literature to fill historical and representational voids, reconsider past iconographies and address the legacies of marginalisation in a critical light. In their sharp analyses of graphic counternarratives that challenge normative constructs of history, nationhood, race, gender, disability and ecology, the authors offer a valuable contribution not only to comics scholarship but also to the advocacy for justice.--Fabrice Leroy, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

This engaging collection of essays provides original perspectives on the medium-specific capabilities of graphic literature to fill historical and representational voids, reconsider past iconographies and address the legacies of marginalisation in a critical light. In their sharp analyses of graphic counternarratives that challenge normative constructs of history, nationhood, race, gender, disability and ecology, the authors offer a valuable contribution not only to comics scholarship but also to the advocacy for justice. -- Fabrice Leroy, University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Author Information

Jennifer Boum Make is an Assistant Professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies at Georgetown University. Her research is focused on the French Caribbean, the legacy of colonialism and the French Atlantic slave trade and care studies. Her academic writing has appeared in multiple venues including Nouvelles Études Francophones, Contemporary French And Francophone Studies, and Francosphères, among others, and her first monograph, Decolonial Care: Reimagining Caregiving in the French Caribbean, is forthcoming. Jennifer is a founding member of the Kwazman Vwa collective. Charly Verstraet is an Assistant Professor of French Studies in the Department of World Languages and Literatures at the American University in Washington, D.C. His research and teaching focus on Caribbean and Indian Ocean studies, Ecocriticism, Bandes dessinées, Soccer and Politics and Translation studies. His co-translation of award-winning Martinican writer Patrick Chamoiseau's Crusoe Footprint (2022) was a finalist for the 2023 French-American Translation Prize. Charly Verstraet is a founding member of the Kwazman Vwa collective.

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