comics and literature – julia round
dot com
Images
(left to right) © Thom Ferrier, Matthew Humpage and
Robert Nicholls. Used with kind permission.
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comics
and literature – julia round dot com
Further details also at www.academia.edu: http://bournemouth.academia.edu/JuliaRound
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Please send email enquiries via Bournemouth University (jround at bournemouth.ac.uk) |
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Julia Round (MA,
PhD) Julia Round lectures in the Media
School at Bournemouth University, UK (BA Communication and Media and BA
English Literature) and edits the peer-reviewed academic journal Studies
in Comics (Intellect Books). She has published and presented work
internationally on cross-media adaptation, television and discourse analysis,
the application of literary terminology to comics, the 'graphic novel'
redefinition, and the presence of gothic and fantastic motifs and themes in
this medium. She holds a PhD in
English Literature from Bristol University, England, an MA in Creative
Writing from Cardiff University, Wales, and a PGCE in Education (Distinction)
and PGCE in Research Supervision (pending) from Bournemouth University. She has previously taught at Central St Martins College of Art and Design, London, and Bristol
University. My
research: My research focuses on comics and literature and applies selected critical models to contemporary British-American comics in order to (1) consider their applicability (2) explore the dichotomy between notions of popular culture and literature and (3) refine the models in question. Areas studied and proposed include the gothic, myth, the fantastic, metafiction, psychogeography, historiography, faction, pornography, and utopian/dystopian fictions. I use these models to look at comics’ semiotic construction; analysing the panel as a hybrid signifier, and considering comics’ language as a performative iconography (e.g. the mask as symbol/action). I also apply my research to the narrative structures of comics’ storytelling, and to the macrocosm of the industry and practices such as cross-cultural and cross-media adaptation. |
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My PhD: From comic book to graphic novel: writing, reading, semiotics Abstract: This
dissertation discusses how changes within the authorship, reading practices
and criticism of contemporary American comics
can alert us to more general questions raised by the inclusion of popular
culture in literature. It employs a
cultural materialist methodology; researching the first decade of the DC
Vertigo imprint (1993-2003) and considering these texts both as the
culmination of trends that can be traced throughout the industry’s history
and as modern literature that sustains elements of certain literary genres. It begins by
summarising the American comics industry’s progress historically and uses
review of literary criticism to examine comics’ progression from marginalised
‘funny books’ to cult literature to academic and mainstream acceptance. It then considers the Vertigo comics from a
variety of perspectives, researching the ways in which they represent the
continuance and culmination of thematic and structural elements perceived in
the literary genres of the Gothic, Myth, and the Fantastic. These elements are returned to as it subsequently approaches the
Vertigo comics as postmodern artefacts, examining the ways in which this
imprint has contributed to the reinvention of both the concept and material
form of comics, and concludes with a case study that applies Roland Barthes’
theories of text/image and semiotics, showing how notions of the sign are
affected by the hybrid nature of the comic book medium. As an interdisciplinary study this research
considers the Vertigo comics in relation to their history, their surroundings
and readership, and to other forms of
cultural/literary output past and present, grounding textual/formal issues in
a historical context and situating itself within the discourse of literature
versus popular culture.
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Links to sample work: List of all published and presented work An interview with Karen Berger (DC Comics) (word doc)
An interview with Steve White (Titan Books) (word doc)
Mutilation and monsters: transcending the human in Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon's Preacher (pdf)
Subverting Shakespeare? The Sandman #19 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' (pdf)
Visual perspective and narrative voice in comics: redefining literary terminology (pdf)
Fragmented identity: the superhero condition (pdf) Links to Studies in Comics back
issues online: Volume 1
Number 2: Autobiography Links to other comics resources: Comics Forum.org Comicsresearch.org (Comics Scholarship
Annotated Bibliographies): http://www.comicsresearch.org/
European Comic Art (journal): http://www.eurocomicart.org/ Grand Comic Book Database: http://www.comics.org ImageTexT (journal): http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext
International Journal of Comic Art
(IJOCA): http://www.ijoca.com Journal of Graphic Novels and
Comics: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/rcom Laydeez Do Comics http://www.laydeezdocomics.com Scottish Word and Image Group
(SWIG): http://www.dundee.ac.uk/english/swig/ Studies in Comics (journal): http://intellectbooks.co.uk/journals.php
Studies in Graphic Narratives
(SIGNs): http://www.graphic-narratives.org
The Comics Journal: http://www.tcj.com/ The Comix Scholars List: http://web.english.ufl.edu/comics/scholars/ |
Current research: I am currently working on a book provisionally entitled Ghosts in the Gutter: Unveiling the Literary Gothic in Contemporary
Comics, which is contracted to be published by McFarland,
2013. Proposed table of contents as follows: Introduction Part 1: Historical perspectives Chapter 1: A brief history of
British-American comics Chapter 2: A brief history of the
Gothic Chapter 3: A critical model of the
Gothic Part 2: The Gothic in comics Chapter 4: Haunted panels: time and
spatiality Chapter 5: Artifice and excess: the
hyperreal Chapter 6: Ghostly voices: the comics
reader Chapter 7: Gothic themes: absorption,
inversion, parody and the Other Part 3: Gothic motifs at the fin de
siècle Chapter 8: The vampire Chapter 9: The witch and the
monstrous-feminine Chapter 10: The dead and undead Chapter 11: Haunted houses and psychogeography Chapter 12: Doppelgangers and doubles
Conclusion
Images © Thom
Ferrier, Matthew Humpage and Robert Nicholls
(left-to-right, respectively). Used with kind
permission. Studies in Comics cover images (left) © Chris Ware (Vol 1), and Bill Sienkiewicz and Alan Moore (Vol 2). Used with
kind permission. Screen sized to be
viewed at 955 x 600 (1024 x 768, maximised) |
