Comics and Modernism
Comics and Modernism
History, Form, and Culture
Contributions by David M. Ball, Scott Bukatman, Hillary Chute, Jean Lee Cole, Louise Kane, Matthew Levay, Andrei Molotiu, Jonathan Najarian, Katherine Roeder, Noa Saunders, Clémence Sfadj, Nick Sturm, Glenn Willmott, and Daniel Worden
Since the early 1990s, cartoonist Art Spiegelman has made the case that comics are the natural inheritor of the aesthetic tradition associated with the modernist movement of the early twentieth century. In recent years, scholars have begun to place greater import on the shared historical circumstances of early comics and literary and artistic modernism. Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture is an interdisciplinary consideration of myriad social, cultural, and aesthetic connections.
Filling a gap in current scholarship, an impressively diverse group of scholars approaches the topic from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds and methodologies. Drawing on work in literary studies, art history, film studies, philosophy, and material culture studies, contributors attend to the dynamic relationship between avant-garde art, literature, and comics. Essays by both established and emerging voices examine topics as divergent as early twentieth-century film, museum exhibitions, newspaper journalism, magazine illustration, and transnational literary circulation.
In presenting varied critical approaches, this book highlights important interpretive questions for the field. Contributors sometimes arrive at thoughtful consensus and at other times settle on productive disagreements. Ultimately, this collection aims to extend traditional lines of inquiry in both comics studies and modernist studies and to reveal overlaps between ostensibly disparate artistic practices and movements.
Comics and Modernism… is a comprehensive and readable account of various dimensions of the subject that answers many questions, while bringing up others, that will keep the subject on a front burner. It is highly recommended.
What works so well in many of these essays is the interrogation of comics on their own terms, even as the medium is situated in relationship to other cultural forms.
Comics and Modernism will find a receptive audience among scholars of modernist cultures as well as of comics and graphic literatures; moreover, selected essays will appeal to readers with interests in twentieth-century and contemporary visual cultures, media studies, and the popular arts. To be sure, as with any such collection, readers will gravitate toward some sections more than others and find some essays more or less persuasive. On the whole, however, the volume greatly advances our knowledge of when and how comics and modernism intersect.
Bringing together some of today’s brightest comics scholars, this groundbreaking and provocative book deepens existing scholarly conversations on the relationship between modernism and comics.
Jonathan Najarian is visiting assistant professor of writing and rhetoric at Colgate University. His research and writing focus on media theory, print history, and popular culture, and his essays have appeared in journals such as Contemporary Literature, Twentieth-Century Literature, and Modernism/modernity.
