Documenting Trauma in Comics

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 is Urban 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-edited Canadian Graphic: Picturing Life Narratives (2016) and is co-editor of the Wilfrid Laurier UP book series Crossing 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 Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi.- 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 Salomon’s Graphic Life Narrative.- 13. Una’s Becoming Unbecoming, Visuality, and Sexual Trauma..- 14. Discourses of Trauma and Representation: Motherhood and Mother Tongue in Miriam Katin’s 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.

“Life writing scholars will appreciate Documenting Trauma in Comics for its expansive theorization of multimodal narratives of trauma beyond the generic, discursive, and affective expectations … . Documenting Trauma in Comics … has a great deal to offer to scholars of life writing beyond comics studies. The attention paid by contributors to the generic affordances … raised by trauma art resonates with the concerns of those interested in auto/biography. Such readers would themselves be rewarded by attention to this volume.” (Janine Utell, Biography, Vol. 44 (4), 2021)