Indiscipline, or, The Condition of Comics Studies

Abstract

The structure of the research university needs serious rethinking," says James Chandler, in his contribution to Critical Inquiry's 2003 symposium on "The Future of Criticism." Calling for, à la Foucault, a historical epistemology of the academic disciplines and indeed the very concept of disciplinarity, Chandler hopes for both "a more rigorous account of what a discipline is" and the exploration of "new possibilities for interdisciplinary connection and exploration" (359). This essay will, if not precisely answer Chandler's call, then undertake a self-reflexive examination of the issue of disciplinarity in academic comics studies, particularly in North America. In the process, I hope to explain why comics studies, which is already inevitably multidisciplinary, must work toward a model of true interdisciplinary collaboration if the field is to thrive. 2 As this issue of Transatlantica attests, and as the growing number of journal issues, articles, and books devoted to comics confirm, comics studies in North America constitutes a nascent academic field of great productivity and promise. Indeed by now one might expect and hope that the field would qualify as something more than "nascent." Certainly much work has been done, horizons for future work have begun to take shape, and, at present, the larger critical and cultural reception of comics in North America is encouraging. However, a number of factors make it difficult to speak of the field as anything other than nascent. These include the weakness of the field's institutional footing (in the form of academic programs devoted to comics study), a lack of consensus regarding critical standards for published work, and, above all, a lack of dialogue regarding the disciplinary status of the field. In fact comics studies has no disciplinary status in the traditional sense, that is, no clear, cohesive, and selfcontained disciplinary identity. I am not about to argue that the field requires such an identity. Rather, I would argue that comics studies cannot have such an identity, for two reasons: one, because the heterogeneous nature of comics means that, in practice, comics study has to be at the intersection of various disciplines (art, literature,

Comic book cartographies: a cartocentred reading of City of Glass, the graphic novel

“…Furthermore, this article could be interpreted as a response to the call for a deeper theoretical and methodological exchange in the doing of geohumanities research. It suggested comic books as a laboratory for developing a truly 'interdisciplinary' 142 research practice through an open dialogue among cultural geography, spatiocentred literary theory and criticism, and comics studies. Hence, I referred to the recent emergence of 'geocritical' and 'cartocritical' approaches to literature, on one hand, and to the emerging field of comic book geographies with its spatial interest in comics, on the other hand.…”

Using the Graphic Narrative to Stimulate Mezirow’s Transformative Learning Theory in Learners

“…As Romagnoli (2014) argued, educators considering using graphic narratives should ensure that they prepare their students with the necessary literacy skills needed to understand these multimodal texts. For an introductory discussion of reading graphic narratives, we encourage instructors to review McCloud’s (1994) text, Understanding Comics , while recognizing that it has been criticized for its formalism in Hatfield (2010). Assessing TL in the context of a case study of one’s own students requires being a reflexive and reflective practitioner, but as suggested in the action research literature, can change how we as educators teach.…”

Análise dos estudos brasileiros sobre quadrinhos publicados de 2018 a 2020

“…De modo geral, os estudos dos quadrinhos podem ser classificados como interdisciplinares ou mesmo "antidisciplinares", pois resistem à concepção acadêmica de compartimentação do conhecimento, o qual é dividido em áreas e disciplinas, com fronteiras delimitadas e objetos de estudo bem definidos (Badman, 2009;Beaty, Hatfield, 2020;Hatfield, 2010;Lent, 2013;Vazquez, 2012). Dessa forma, seus pesquisadores precisam transitar de modo transversal 9a Arte, São Paulo, SP, v. 11, 2023.e212650 em diferentes áreas, construindo sua base teórica a partir de diferentes fontes, de áreas distintas, e publicar seus estudos em revistas não especializadas (Badman, 2009;Strömberg, 2016;Vazquez, 2012), encontrando aliados, oportunidades e estratégias para investigar os quadrinhos em consonância com sua própria área (Hatfield, 2017).…”

“…Considerando esse contexto heterogêneo no qual se desenvolvem os estudos da Nona Arte, Vergueiro (2017) Vergueiro (2017) discute também as técnicas que podem ser utilizadas na análise dos quadrinhos: análise semiótica, análise do discurso, análise literária, análise retórica, análise de conteúdo, análise histórica, estudos de caso. No Gráfico 1 observa-se uma tendência de crescimento dos estudos dos quadrinhos, em consonância com as afirmações referentes ao crescimento das pesquisas do campo encontradas na literatura da área (Hatfield, 2010;Oliveira, 2014;Vergueiro, 2017;Vergueiro, Santos, 2019). Além disso, o número maior de artigos em 2020, encontra um paralelo no editorial da edição do mesmo ano do periódico…”