Alice Jaggers talks with Elizabeth Trembley about her recent book, Look Again. Her memoir follows her various versions of her experience finding a dead body in the woods and the mental companions she has along the way. Both Alice and Beth have experienced trauma, which influences their discussion on the weirdness of trauma, how finicky memory can be, what it means to have a safe space violated, and the importance of using art (especially comics) to heal. After this interview was recorded, Beth hosted Drawing Together (link below)! Elizabeth Trembley’s Bio: Beth grew up knowing herself to be a kid who… Read More
Call for Papers: A Nordic Network for Comics Research conference hosted by Ghent University in collaboration with the University of Liège (ACME) and KU Leuven
A Nordic Network for Comics Research conference hosted by Ghent University in collaboration with the University of Liège (ACME) and KU Leuven April 20-21, 2017 Ghent, Belgium Introduction “Memory is tabooed as unpredictable, unreliable, irrational”, deplored Adorno more than half a century ago (122). Although nowadays the study of memory has established itself, memory remains an untamable beast, broad and interdisciplinary in its scope. This conference seeks to understand memory, and more specifically the relationship between comics and memory, by welcoming papers on the following three lines of inquiry: 1. Personal memory Research on comics and personal memory… Read More
Fun Home
Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) chronicles the events of Bechdel’s childhood in the early 1970’s and her entry into adulthood and homosexuality at university. Her father was a repressed, unhappy aesthete, trapped in family life in his home town in rural Pennsylvania, running the family funeral home and teaching at the local school to make ends meet. He was a closet gay who had affairs with young men an ended up in court for plying teenage boys with alcohol. His death, most probably a suicide, haunts the book, an “extended meditation on history, memory, identity and trauma”… Read More