Feminism and Comics Studies

Dear Colleagues,

Feminist studies, always already a (inter)disciplinary challenge, has so much to say around creative forms of resistance, around comics as crisis witnessing, around memoir and self-revelation, around superherodom studies and posthumanism.  In 2023, comics studies is established enough to offer (a few) tenure-track jobs and graduate programs, but is still finding itself in many ways, ways that continue to challenge traditional disciplinarity.  Back in 2010, in “Indiscipline, or, The Condition of Comics Studies,” Charles Hatfield characterized comics studies as “a nascent academic field of great productivity and promise” (Transatlantica, 1, 2010).  This Special Issue asks us, at this particular time, to bring these interdisciplinary challenges together productively:  What can these fields say and do for one another, to start new critical dialogues about the relevance of comics studies to feminist scholarship, and the relevance of critical feminism(s), to comics studies? Feminism is not a unified body, and just saying so is step 1 towards an acknowledgement of shared “indisciplinarity” with comics studies.  What can or should feminist scholarship be doing with reproductive justice in comic art? With disability studies in comic art? What interventions from Black feminism, Indigenous feminism, transfeminism can be brought into the indiscipline of comics studies?   I turn to bell hooks to bring us together with love and mutual respect: “Without an ethic of love shaping the direction of our political vision and our radical aspirations, we are often seduced, in one way or the other, into continued allegiance to systems of domination—imperialism, sexism, racism, classism” (from “Love as the Practice of Freedom”). Feminism can and does fail as a critical tool set, can be imposed where it is not wanted and is not part of the artistic creator’s self-identification.  Where that happens, it needs to be talked about and through, and become part of feminist scholarship’s work towards better criticism and self-awareness.  So this Special Issue is about both doing and undoing, and about love within both feminist scholarship and comics studies.

Dr. Jane Tolmie
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Humanities is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• comics studies
• comics
• feminist studies
• feminism
• reproductive justice
• (dis)ability
• bodymind
• comics and human rights

Title: Falling Back in Love with Trans-Inclusive Feminism: Canadian Creative Artists Reject Death and Choose Transformation Through Re-Storying

Abstract: Prevailing political and popular narratives often treat the issue of trans death as an inevitability and reduce complex stories of trans life to their endings. This paper investigates the transformative potential of creative forms of resistance—specifically a selection of Canadian poetry and comics—and how their artistic affordances engage with transfeminism as an approach to narratives of trans existence. Rooted in Canadian author Kai Cheng Thom’s reckoning with the shortcomings of trans-exclusionary feminist thought, and informed by Chinua Achebe’s conceptualization of re-storying, this essay explores how I Hope We Choose Love and Falling Back in Love with Being Human by Kai Cheng Thom, Death Threat by Canadian creatives Vivek Shraya and Ness Lee, and comics from Assigned Male by trans activist and Canadian comic artist Sophie Labelle re-story “necessary” trans death to orient queer death spaces around a trans-for-trans (t4t) praxis of narrativization. Addressing the (inter)disciplinary possibilities of trans-inclusive feminism through Kimberlé Crenshaw, Kata Kyrölä, and Cameron Awkward-Rich, and of comics studies with KC Councilor and Hillary Chute, this article celebrates how these texts disavow and re-story the “Good” Trans Character, who dies to satisfy transmisogynistic ideologies, and theorizes the T4T Dead Trans Character, who dies to reclaim instances of trans death and recodify trans personhood as a site of hope, agency, and self-determination. In their re-storying, these texts recognize the transformative potential of trans existence and echo Thom in their urging of trans-inclusive feminism to renounce narratives of disposability and invest in the dignity of all human life.

Title: Woman, Life, Freedom: resistance through the pedagogy of comics and human rights

Abstract: This started with a lecture called “Say Her Name: Teaching Persepolis after Mahsa Amini.” With better attention to the Kurdish Women’s Freedom Movement, the lecture title now would be “Say Her Name: Teaching Persepolis after Jina Mahsa Amini,” using her Kurdish name as well as her Persian one. Since the 2022 death of Jina Mahsa Amini in custody of the Guidance Patrol or morality police in Tehran, Iran, Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi now functions in the classroom as a comics touching point for human rights discourses around the world, and in particular – though not exclusively – those that impact women. Kimberlé Crenshaw, who brought intersectionality to the forefront of cultural and political discourses in 1989, has used the phrase ‘say her name’ to draw attention to the deaths of women and children, especially black women and children, at the hands of law enforcement officers. Chants of “Say her name, Mahsa Amini,” rang among protesters outside Khalifa International Stadium in Qatar ahead of Iran’s first match of the World Cup 2022 against England. Now in 2024, cultural conversations around feminism and creativity as resistance can turn to the Woman, Life, Freedom movement in Iran. Shervin Hajipour’s song “Baraye,” meaning “for” in Persian, inspired by tweets echoing protesters’ call for change, has become an anthem of the uprising. The comics classroom can address the concerns and issues surrounding Amini’s death and the ongoing relevance of Persepolis as a coming-of-age text about living as a woman in Iran. In dialogue with the works of Sidonie Smith, Hillary Chute, Sally Munt, bell hooks, and Lola Olufemi, this piece addresses the pedagogy of human rights through comic art as crisis witnessing. With attention to comics material from two members of the Iranian diaspora, Shabnam Adiban and Farid Vahid, from the 2024 collection Woman, Life, Freedom, put together by Satrapi, this piece navigates potential orientalism and Islamophobia in the Western classroom through engagement with intersectional feminism. Feminist work is justice work, and the classroom must address Olufemi’s reminder that “Feminism is a political project about what could be."