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Comics & Media: A Special Issue of "Critical Inquiry"
The past decade has seen the medium of comics reach unprecedented heights of critical acclaim and commercial success . Comics & Media reflects that, bringing together an amazing array of contributors--creators and critics alike--to discuss the state, future, and potential of the medium.
Loaded with full-color reproductions of work by such legends as R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Lynda Barry, the book addresses the place of comics in both a contemporary and historical context. Essays by such high-profile figures as Tom Gunning, N. Katherine Hayles, Patrick Jagoda, and W. J. T. Mitchell address a stunning range of topics, including the place of comics in the history of aesthetics, changes to popular art forms, digital humanities, and ongoing tensions between new and old media. The result is a substantial step forward for our understanding of what comics are and can be, and the growing place they hold in our culture.
Loaded with full-color reproductions of work by such legends as R. Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Alison Bechdel, Chris Ware, Daniel Clowes, and Lynda Barry, the book addresses the place of comics in both a contemporary and historical context. Essays by such high-profile figures as Tom Gunning, N. Katherine Hayles, Patrick Jagoda, and W. J. T. Mitchell address a stunning range of topics, including the place of comics in the history of aesthetics, changes to popular art forms, digital humanities, and ongoing tensions between new and old media. The result is a substantial step forward for our understanding of what comics are and can be, and the growing place they hold in our culture.
284 pages, Paperback
First published March 24, 2014
2 people are currently reading
53 people want to read
About the author
Hillary L. Chute
9 books37 followersHillary Chute is an American literary scholar and an expert on comics and graphic narratives.
Chute's work focuses on comics and graphic novels, contemporary fiction, visual studies, American literature, gender and sexuality studies, literature and the arts, critical theory, and media studies.
She is the author of Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics (Columbia University Press, 2010), Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form (Harvard University Press, 2016), and Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere (Harper, 2017). Her book Maus Now: Selected Writing, an edited volume, appeared from Pantheon in 2022.
She is also associate editor of Art Spiegelman’s MetaMaus (Pantheon, 2011), which won a National Jewish Book Award, among other prizes. She recently co-edited the Critical Inquiry special issue “Comics & Media” (University of Chicago Press, 2014), and in 2006 she co-edited the MFS: Modern Fiction Studies special issue “Graphic Narrative,” the first issue of a journal in the field of literature devoted to analyzing comics. She has written for publications including Artforum, Bookforum, The Believer, and Poetry.
She was associate professor of English, and an associate faculty member in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago before joining the Northeastern faculty as Distinguished Professor of English and Art + Design. Chute serves on the Executive Committee of Northeastern’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. She is a comics and graphic novels columnist for the The New York Times Book Review.
Chute's work focuses on comics and graphic novels, contemporary fiction, visual studies, American literature, gender and sexuality studies, literature and the arts, critical theory, and media studies.
She is the author of Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics (Columbia University Press, 2010), Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists (University of Chicago Press, 2014), Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form (Harvard University Press, 2016), and Why Comics? From Underground to Everywhere (Harper, 2017). Her book Maus Now: Selected Writing, an edited volume, appeared from Pantheon in 2022.
She is also associate editor of Art Spiegelman’s MetaMaus (Pantheon, 2011), which won a National Jewish Book Award, among other prizes. She recently co-edited the Critical Inquiry special issue “Comics & Media” (University of Chicago Press, 2014), and in 2006 she co-edited the MFS: Modern Fiction Studies special issue “Graphic Narrative,” the first issue of a journal in the field of literature devoted to analyzing comics. She has written for publications including Artforum, Bookforum, The Believer, and Poetry.
She was associate professor of English, and an associate faculty member in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Chicago before joining the Northeastern faculty as Distinguished Professor of English and Art + Design. Chute serves on the Executive Committee of Northeastern’s Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. She is a comics and graphic novels columnist for the The New York Times Book Review.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 30, 2021
This is a transcript including Visuals, from the Comics and Media symposium at University of Chicago. Having seminal cartoonists together, discussing the past present and future of their ouvre was an amazing glimpse to the source of talent.
R. Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Phoebe Glockner, Allison Bechdel, etc.
R. Crumb, Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Daniel Clowes, Chris Ware, Art Spiegelman, Phoebe Glockner, Allison Bechdel, etc.
December 29, 2014
Dense, academic writing on comics and the comics form, interspersed with transcripts from the comics conference held at U Chicago in 2012. Worthwhile for insights that contextualize comics in the fields of art history, performance, etc. One article was unreadable. My favorite was on Hellboy.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews