Why are so many contemporary comics and graphic narratives written as memoirs or documentaries of traumatic events? Is there a specific relationship between the comics form and the documentation and reportage of trauma? How do the interpretive demands made on comics readers shape their relationships with traumatic events? And how does comics documentation of traumatic pasts operate across national borders and in different cultural, political, and politicised contexts? 

The sixteen chapters and three comics included in Documenting Trauma in Comics set out to answer exactly these questions. Drawing on a range of historically and geographically expansive examples, the contributors bring their different perspectives to bear on the tangled and often fraught intersections between trauma studies, comics studies, and theories of documentary practices and processes. The result is a collection that shows how comics is not simply related to trauma, but a generativeforce that has become central to its remembrance, documentation, and study.

         

Dominic Davies is a Lecturer in English at City, University of London. He holds a DPhil and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of Oxford. He is the author and editor of several books, articles, and chapters, and his most recent monograph isUrban Comics: Infrastructure& the Global City in Contemporary Graphic Narratives(2019).

 

Candida Rifkind is a Professor in the Department of English, University of Winnipeg, Canada. In addition to over a dozen journal articles and book chapters in comics studies, she co-editedCanadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives (2016) and is co-editor of the Wilfrid Laurier UP book seriesCrossing Lines: Transcultural/Transnational Comics Studies. 

ContributorsHaya Alfarhan, King's College London, UKAna Baeza Ruiz, University of Leeds, UKHillary Chute, Northeastern University, USA Michael Goodrum, Canterbury Christ Church University, UKIan Hague, London College of Communication, UKAlexandra Lloyd, University of Oxford, UKSarah McNicol, Manchester Metropolitan University, UKNina Mickwitz London College of Communication, UKBruce Mutard, Independent Artist, AustraliaKatalin Orbán, Eötvös Loránd University, HungaryEmma Parker, University of Leeds, UKJohannes C. P. Schmid, University of Hamburg, GermanyA. P. Payal, University of Delhi, IndiaRituparna Sengupta, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, IndiaNicola Streeten, London College of Communication, UKEszter Szép, Eötvös Loránd University, HungaryE. Dawson Varughese, Snr Fellow, Manipal Centre for Humanities, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Manipal, India   

1. Introduction: Documenting Trauma in Comics. Section I: Documenting Trauma- 2. Hierarchies of Pain: Trauma Tropes Today and Tomorrow.- 3. Emotional History and Legacies of War in Recent German Comics and Graphic Novels.- 4. The Past That Will Not Die: Trauma, Race and Zombie Empire in Horror Comics of the 1950s.- 5. Exploring Trauma and Social Haunting Through Community Comics Creation.- 6. Comic: "Documenting Trauma".- Section II:  Traumatic Pasts.- 7. Traumatic Moments: Retrospective Seeing of Violation, Rupture and Injury in Three Post-millennial Indian Graphic Narratives. - 8. This Side, That Side: Restoring Memory, Restorying Partition.- 9. Visual Detention: Reclaiming Human Rights Through Memory in Leila AbdelrazaqsBaddawi.-10. Comic: Crying in the Chapel.- Section III: Embodies Histories.- 11. Folding, Cutting, Reassembling: Materializing Trauma and Memory in Comics.- 12. 'To Create Her World Anew: Charlotte Salomons Graphic Life Narrative.- 13. UnasBecoming Unbecoming, Visuality, and Sexual Trauma..- 14. Discourses of Trauma and Representation: Motherhood and Mother Tongue in Miriam Katins Graphic Memoirs.- 15. Comic: First Person Third.- Section IV: Graphic Reportage.- 16. Comics Telling Refugee Stories.- 17. Migrant Detention Comics and the Aesthetic Technologies of Compassion.- 18. Comics as Memoir and Documentary: A Case Study of Sarah Glidden.- 19. Afterword.