Over the past few days, I’ve had to pull together a literature and composition course for the fall semester. As I thought about the course, I moved from Appalachian literature with writers such as Crystal Wilkinson, David Joy, and S.A. Cosby to mystery novels with Cosby and others to my already planned “The Reverberations of World War II” syllabus for a more introductory course. … Read More “Who Watches Superheroes?” Syllabus
In order to understand the present and prepare for the future, we must understand the past and the ways that the past impact the present. As Frederick Douglas put it in his 1852 speech What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?, “We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future.” When … Read More We Must Critically Engage With the Past or We Are Doomed to Repeat It
A few weeks ago, I got asked to present on Pauline Hopkins at an upcoming conference. I accepted, and I chose to present on Hopkins’ Of One Blood, Afrofuturism, and Black Panther. Instead of looking at the film, as other scholars have done, I looked at the opening scene in Fantastic Four #52. As well, I did not focus on everything I could have … Read More Pauline Hopkins, Afrofuturism, and Black Panther
One of the things I love about graphic narratives, as I’ve pointed out numerous times, is how they engage the reader in construction of the story, specifically through the use of the gutter, that space in between panels where the reader must fill in the gaps of movement from one moment to another. The gutter, as well, serves as a visual marker that severs … Read More The Power of the Gutter in Saladin Ahmed and Sami Kivelä’s “Abbott”
On October 8, 1955, Jackie Ormes’ Patty-Jo ’n’ Ginger panel in the Pittsburgh Courier showed Patty-Jo standing next to a door as she tells her sister, “I don’t want to seem touchy on the subject . . . but, that new little white tea-kettle just whistled at me!” Ginger leans on a couch, looking at her younger sister. She hold a newspaper behind her back, hiding the … Read More Are We Protecting Our Children When We Don’t Answer Their Questions?
Interminable Rambling 