Interview with the publishers of the new „Comics | Histories“ series
The new series „Comics | Histories“ presents its first book! This edited study published by Assoc.-Professor Dr. Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto, Assist.-Professor Dr. Felix Giesa and Professor Dr. Christina Meyer seeks to highlight contributions to history by comics in particular. The contributions to this book not only address questions relating to practices of canonisation, periodisation and digitisation, but also provide historical perspectives on a variety of humorous magazines and newspapers and deal with issues relating to adapting and revising comics in different parts of the world and in different cultures. The editors of the book hope that the collection of (ongoing) research projects will spark readers’ curiosity and ignite their ambition to explore comics|histories in multifarious ways. We decided to ask the publishers about their book, so take a look at our interview below, with insights into the published study:
Comics Studies has developed considerably as an interdisciplinary field of research in recent years. Your anthology and the new book series Comics | Histories aim to take a prospective look at the medium. Which innovative approaches or methodologies from the contributions in this volume do you see as particularly trend-setting for future research in this field?
„As we write in the introduction of our edited volume, “the international scholarship on the medium of comics has grown extensively, in particular in the past twenty years, in and across different academic disciplines” (8) – and our first edited volume in the newly launched book series situates itself in this (still) expanding and increasingly diversifying research on the medium of comics by offering (re-)readings of and new approaches to well-researched (as well as under-researched) comics and other forms of graphic narratives from the nineteenth century (the century in which comics emerged as a mass medium) to today. A few of our contributions (Sugathan, Abrol, Méon, Malone, for example), inspired by, among others, interdisciplinary production studies research projects, zoom into the (medial, economic, historical, political, social and technological) conditions under which comics emerged in the past, thus putting a strong focus on individual and institutional forces involved in the production, distribution and consumption of comics. Historicized close readings and historicizing narratives of comics contexts is a trend that has started a few years ago and will continue, we believe, to influence the study of comics, past and present. A second trend that we think our contributions give evidence to is a growing emphasis on the role that digitization plays in archiving, curating, collecting, researching and saving comics and other forms of graphic literature (as well as other media; see for example, Giesa, Hartel and Dunst). Last not least, though certainly more aspects would have to be mentioned / added in our answer here, all our contributions, implicitly or explicitly, address questions of knowledge formation and power structures.“
Among other things, the volume deals with the question of canonization and periodization of comics. To what extent can these classic categories still serve as valid research approaches in the face of increasing digitalization and the global interdependence of the medium? Or is a reorientation necessary in order to do justice to current developments?
„The role that periodizations and classifications (undertaken by, among others, comics scholars, reviewers, publishers, and more) play in, for instance, canon formations and generate practices of inclusion and exclusion (or marginalization) will also continue to impact comics studies (see, for example, Hibbett, Lesage, Lange, Collignon in our edited volume).
Critically engaging with limitations relating to genre, and any other ordering principles for that matter (those in use for many years, decades, centuries even, and some still in use today, and also those that have been modified), makes classifications – including periodizations – valid research categories in and across different disciplines. As Gérard Genette’s structuralist taxonomy has shown – his work has invited literary and cultural scholars to reconsider the idea of, and critical engagement with, narrating instances and their varying relationships to a story and story characters, and varying degrees of involvement in the perception of events in narrative texts – these, one might call them, meta-discussions allow for an enhanced understanding of classifying practices, while also inspiring reorientations concerning the use of certain categories and concepts.“
Your volume focuses on the transnational perspective in order not to reduce comics to national markets such as North America, France or Japan. What insights were you able to gain through the authors‘ intercultural dialogue and collaboration with international academics, and how do these findings enrich current comics historiography?
„One of the most important aspects that transnational approaches to comics (and other media) have produced, and continue to produce, are the complex networks and entanglements between different ‘actants’ that are often not immediately visible at first glance, the various ‘traveling’ routes of texts, concepts, images, and the demographically heterogeneous audiences of comics and other forms of graphic narratives. Many of our contributions bring to light the colonial – imperialist – histories of comics production, distribution and consumption (cf., for instance, the opening chapters in our edited volumes).
Furthermore, the contributions show (once again) that comics research cannot view its objects in isolation as national artifacts if it wants to do justice to them in their transcultural complexity. Stories – comics – are never created in a vacuum; they must always be viewed in a complex historical-transnational network in order to trace their line of development.
Ultimately, it is precisely such considerations that our new series would like to address.“
This volume is the first in your new series Comics | Histories. To what extent do you see it as programmatic for the future direction of the book series? Which thematic focuses or methodological approaches should be further explored or newly developed in the following volumes?
„Apart from further transnational approaches to comics (see above) and case studies offering histories and genealogies of comics and other forms of graphic narrative, we as the editors of the newly launched book series are in particular interested in research projects that engage with, as we write in the introduction of our edited volume, “crucial disciplinary concerns of history (as specified in, for example, literary, cultural, media, or art history). While there is already a significant number of publications that foreground representations of history in comics, our book series seeks to highlight comics-specific contributions to history. This includes consideration of critical issues that are prevalent in research on contemporary comics, namely, intersectionality, postcolonialism, or agency in user cultures, in their relation to the aesthetic and cultural media specificities of comics” (9). In addition to this, we think the scholarship on comics will benefit from projects that “tackle theories and methods used for historical analysis, the archives consulted during research (and their availability and accessibility), and the value attributed to (online) resources” (8-9), thus also strengthening digital research methods in historical comics research. The past years have brought to the book market some really interesting and important research projects addressing these questions, and we look forward to learning more about how comics scholars ‘find’ their projects in the first place, how they access their objects of study, and how the use, for example, online resources in their research on the medium of comics. Last not least, we think critical (re-)considerations of the historiography of comics studies as an interdisciplinary field of research will (continue to) produce new insights with regard to areas, texts, methods, etc., left out, and with what implications, thus turning research on comics into an object of analysis itself (cf. p. 11 in our introduction).“
