German Graphic Narratives and Trauma

Author: Elisabeth Krimmer, Christina Kraenzle, Dr Aylin Bademsoy, Dr John D. Benjamin, Dr Katja Herges, Dr Elizabeth “Biz” Nijdam, Dr Evelyn Preuss, Dr Marina Rauchenbacher, Dr Charlotte Schallie and Dr Maureen Burdock Series: Studies in German Literature Linguistics and Culture

Hardcover

This volume explores the representation of political, racial, sexual, and environmental trauma in German-language graphic narratives, which has thus far received little scholarly attention.

Pre order release date
27th May 2025

Pre Order

$312.81

Or pay later with

Free 30 day returns Secure transaction

Pre order release date
27th May 2025

Check delivery options

Hardcover

PRODUCT INFORMATION

Summary

This volume explores the representation of political, racial, sexual, and environmental trauma in German-language graphic narratives, which has thus far received little scholarly attention.

Description

This volume explores the representation of political, racial, sexual, and environmental trauma in German-language graphic narratives, which has thus far received little scholarly attention.In recent decades, as graphic novels have exploded in popularity and have increasingly been engaged with by scholarship, there has been a marked increase in comics that deal with traumatic experiences. These experiences arise variously from warfare, genocide, terrorism, racism, sexual violence, domestic violence, illness, disability, migration, natural disasters, or climate-change, among other causes. Indeed, scholars including Hillary Chute and Gillian Whitlock have argued that graphic narratives are particularly well-suited to portraying traumatic experiences through the lens of individual memories.This edited volume builds on the emergent body of work on the representation of trauma in graphic narratives, but focuses exclusively on German-language graphic narratives, whose exploration of trauma has so far received little scholarly attention. Essays dealing with theoretical and conceptual concerns are joined by analyses of individual creators of graphic narratives, including Olivia Vieweg and Volker Reiche. In addition, there are transcribed conversations among the contributors to the graphic story compilation But I Live, Miriam Libicki, Gilad Seliktar, and Barbara Yelin, and between Birgit Weyhe, creator of the graphic narratives Madgermanes and Rude Girl, and the Germanist Priscilla Layne, who is the model for the main character in the latter book. A final essay looks back further with a critical appraisal of the poet Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann's sampling of comics in his late 1960s Popliteratur works.

About the Author

ELISABETH KRIMMER is Professor of German at the University of California, Davis. MAUREEN BURDOCK is a graphic storyteller, writer, and illustrator with dual master's degrees from the California School of the Arts and a PhD in Cultural Studies from the University of California, Davis. Aylin Bademsoy is a PhD candidate in the German Department at UC Davis. KATJA HERGES is a physician and holds a PhD in German from the University of California, Davis. Evelyn Preuss is finishing her dissertation on East German cinema at Yale University. In addition, she is pursuing a project on neoliberalism and globalization(s) that examines the political effects of globalized media and culture and asks to what extent art can provide alternative, inclusiveplatforms for building political and social consensus. Currently, she is coediting a volume, Through the Wall(s), examining the GDR's transnationalism in relation to informal networking and Eigensinn. She has published on East German Cinema, the intersection of media, architecture and politics, as well as on the disparity between Eastern and Western perspectives in a number of journals and anthologies.