Urban Comics

Dominic Davies is a Lecturer in English at City, University of London. In 2018 he finished a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Oxford, where he also completed his DPhil and established the TORCH Network, ‘Comics and Graphic Novels: The Politics of Form’. He is the author of Imperial Infrastructure and Spatial Resistance in Colonial Literature, 1880-1930 (2017), along with a number of articles and book chapters exploring the relationship between urban infrastructure, the built environment and artistic and literary cultures. He is the co-editor of Fighting Words: Fifteen Books that Shaped the Postcolonial World (2017) and Planned Violence: Post/Colonial Urban Infrastructure, Literature & Culture (2018). He is also the editor of a collection of essays and comics entitled Documenting Trauma in Comics: Traumatic Pasts, Embodied Histories & Graphic Reportage (2019).

• PrefaceIntroduction. Urban Comics: Infrastructure and the Global City in Contemporary Graphic NarrativesIntroduction: The Camp and the CityForm and InfrastructureInfrastructural FormComics Collectives as Networked Urban Social MovementsThe Image of the Global CityNew York, New York: A Brief History of Comics and the CityFive Southern City Case StudiesChapter 1. Drawing Public Space: Revolutionary Visual Cultures and the Right to the City in CairoIntroduction: Revolutionary Visual Cultures and Gendered Public SpacesEgyptian ‘Comix’, Online and OfflineUrban Cairo in Text and ImageVision and Visibility in Magdy El Shafee’s Metro (2008) Volume and Verticality in Deena Mohamed’s Qahera, the Webcomic, Not the City (2013-2015) Building Comics, Building CitiesChapter 2. Image-Making in the Global City: Eco-Speculative Fictions and Urban Social Movements in Cape TownIntroduction: South African Cartoons, Comix and Co-mixed Visual CulturesPrivatisation, Segregation and Image-Making in the Global CityAfrofuturism, Solarpunk and Water PoliticsFlooding the Cape Town ‘Utopia’Turning to Townships: Urban Social Movements in Cape TownChapter 3. Graphic Katrina: Disaster Capitalism and Tourism Gentrification in New OrleansIntroduction: ‘There’s No Such Thing As A Natural Disaster’Voyeurism and Voluntourism in the ‘Drowned City’Vertical Perspectives in Josh Neufeld’s A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge (2009)Comics and Zines in New Orleans: Gentrifying Forms, DIY CitiesAutographics, Art and Activism in Erin Wilson’s Snowbird (2013)Chapter 4. Comics, Collectives, Collaborations: Engineering Pedestrian and Public Spaces in DelhiIntroduction: The City-as-Circuitboard‘Engineering’ Comics: Orijit Sen and the Pao CollectiveWorld Class Delhi: Politics in the City ‘Inside-Out’Pedestrianism and Penmanship in Sarnath Banerjee’s Graphic NarrativesHistories of the Neoliberal Present in Vishwajyoti Ghosh’s Delhi Calm (2010)Gendering the Right to the City: Women’s Maps, Women’s LinesChapter 5. Comics as Infrastructure: Public Space and Post-war Reconstruction in BeirutIntroduction: Post-war Reconstruction in the Neoliberal EraWeaponised Infrastructure in Wartime BeirutRebuilding the City in Zeina Abirached’s Graphic MemoirsLamia Ziadé’s Bye Bye Babylon: The City as WitnessUrban Warfare and Civilian Life in Text and ImageNew Geographies of Beirut: Samandal as Urban Social MovementConclusion. Bordered Forms, Bordered Worlds

"An outstanding book about the relevance of comics in contemporary urban struggles." --Jörn Ahrens, University of Giessen, Germany