Description

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Drawing (in) the Feminine celebrates and examines the richness of contemporary women’s production in French and Francophone comics art and considers the history of representations made by both dominant and marginalized creators. Bridging historical and contemporary comics output, these essays illuminate the interfaces among genre, gender, and cultural history. Contributors from both sides of the Atlantic, and across a variety of methodologies and disciplinary orientations, challenge prevailing claims about the absence of women creators, characters, and readers in bande dessinée, arguing that women have always been part of its history. While still far from achieving parity with their male counterparts, female creators are occupying an increasingly significant portion of the French-language comics publishing industry, and creators of all genders are putting forth stories that reflect on the diversity and richness of women’s and gender-nonconforming people’s experiences. In the essays collected here, contributors push back against the ways in which the marginalization of women within bande dessinée history has overshadowed their significant contributions, extending avenues for further exploring the true diversity of a flourishing contemporary production. 

 

Contributors:  
Armelle Blin-Rolland, Véronique Bragard, Michelle Bumatay, Benoît Crucifix, Isabelle Delorme, Jacques Dürrenmatt, Margaret C. Flinn, Alexandra Gueydan-Turek, Jennifer Howell, Jessica Kohn, Sylvain Lesage, Catriona MacLeod, Mark McKinney 

About the Author

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Margaret C. Flinn is an Associate Professor in the Department of French and Italian and the Department of Theatre, Film, and Media Arts at The Ohio State University. She is the author of The Social Architecture of French Cinema, 1929–1939.

Praise For…

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“From the portrayal of women in comics in relation to environmental concerns and social/political debates over abortion, to women in sub-Saharan African and MENA comics, the scholarship in Drawing (in) the Feminine is at the forefront of current conversations in both gender and comics studies.” —Ann Miller, author of Reading Bande Dessinée: Critical Approaches to French-Language Comic Strip 

“Drawing (in) the Feminine seamlessly integrates a French corpus that is neither comics nor graphic novel with a cultural studies approach to graphic narrative, keeping the best of each. Even for scholars trained in the Francophone corpus and research tradition, it will hold many new discoveries.” —Jan Baetens, author of Novelization: From Film to Novel