Comics and Graphic Novels - (Readers' Guides to Essential Criticism) by Julia Round & Rikke Platz Cortsen & Maaheen Ahmed (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

Providing an overview of the dynamic field of comics and graphic novels for students and researchers, this Essential Guide contextualises the major research trends, debates and ideas that have emerged in Comics Studies over the past decades. Interdisciplinary and international in its scope, the critical approaches on offer spread across a wide range of strands, from the formal and the ideological to the historical, literary and cultural.

Its concise chapters provide accessible introductions to comics methodologies, comics histories and cultures across the world, high-profile creators and titles, insights from audience and fan studies, and important themes and genres, such as autobiography and superheroes. It also surveys the alternative and small press alongside general reference works and textbooks on comics. Each chapter is complemented by list of key reference works.

Review Quotes

"The volume provides an excellent resource for anyone interested in this topic, and will doubtless remain so as the field grows further in the coming years." --Modern Language Review

"This is a book about how to approach comics that in itself approaches comics with finesse. The different complementary sections draw upon uses of critical theory, historical contextualisation, artists and audiences, and what the comics themselves say, directly as well as implicitly. The work is a masterclass in applied method and will be of use to all who study comics, be it professionally, for the fun of it, or both." --Laurence Grove, Professor of French and Text/Image Studies and Director of the Stirling Maxwell Centre, University of Glasgow, UK

About the Author

Dr Julia Round is a Principal Lecturer at Bournemouth University, UK. Her books include Gothic in Comics and Graphic Novels (2014) and the award-winning Gothic for Girls (2019).

Dr Rikke Platz Cortsen is Assistant Professor at University College Copenhagen, Denmark. Her research focuses on time and space in comics and the way identity is intertwined with place in contemporary Nordic comics. She co-edited the research anthology Comics and Power (2015).

Dr Maaheen Ahmed is Associate Professor at Ghent University, Belgium and principal investigator of COMICS, a multi-researcher project funded by the European Research Council.