The Comics of Alison Bechdel: From the Outside In (Critical Approaches to Comics Artists Series)

University Press of Mississippi

ISBN 10: 1496825780 / ISBN 13: 9781496825780

Published by University Press of Mississippi, 2019

About this Item

Befriedigend/Good: Durchschnittlich erhaltenes Buch bzw. Schutzumschlag mit Gebrauchsspuren, aber vollständigen Seiten. / Describes the average WORN book or dust jacket that has all the pages present.

Seller Inventory # M01496825780-G

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Comics of Alison Bechdel: From the Outside In (Critical Approaches to Comics Artists Series)
• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Publication Date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1496825780
• ISBN 13: 9781496825780
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: good

About this title

Synopsis

Contributions by Michelle Ann Abate, Leah Anderst, Alissa S. Bourbonnais, Tyler Bradway, Natalja Chestopalova, Margaret Galvan, Judith Kegan Gardiner, Katie Hogan, Jonathan M. Hollister, Yetta Howard, Katherine Kelp-Stebbins, Don L. Latham, Vanessa Lauber, Katherine Parker-Hay, Anne N. Thalheimer, Janine Utell, and Susan R. Van Dyne

Alison Bechdel is both a driver and beneficiary of the welcoming of comics into the mainstream. Indeed, the seemingly simple binary of outside/inside seems perpetually troubled throughout the career of this important comics artist, known for Fun Home, Are You My Mother?, and Dykes to Watch Out For. This volume extends the body of scholarship on her work from a range of interdisciplinary perspectives.

In a definitive collection of original essays, scholars cover the span of Bechdel’s career, placing her groundbreaking early work within the context of her more well-known recent projects. The contributors provide new insights on major themes in Bechdel’s work, such as gender performativity, masculinity, lesbian politics and representation, trauma, life writing, and queer theory.

Situating Bechdel among other comics artists, this book charts possible influences on her work, probes the experimental traits of her comics in their representations of kinship and trauma, combs archival materials to gain insight into Bechdel’s creative process, and analyzes her work in community building and space making through the comics form.

Ultimately, the volume shows that Bechdel’s work consists of performing a series of selves—serializing the self, as it were—each constructed and refracted across and within her chosen artistic modes and genres.

About the Author

Janine Utell is professor and chair of English at Widener University. She is author of Engagements with Narrative and James Joyce and the Revolt of Love: Marriage, Adultery, Desire. She serves as editor of the Space Between: Literature and Culture, 1914–1945, a peer-reviewed digital journal.