Like obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) itself, Just Roll with It by Veronica Agarwal and Lee Durfey-Lavoie does not reveal itself immediately. The YA graphic novel betrays nothing on its cover, with its summary blurb, or for the first sixty-plus pages of the story. With no overt initial comment, the narrative follows sixth-grader Maggie as she…[Read more]

This paper draws on the letters and messages and newspaper clipping held by the BBC Written Archives Centre in relation to the 1954 adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four as a case study for considering how we understand the historical reception of programming. This production is particularly useful in this regard because it achieved a certain…[Read more]

The article is an example of a visual map of the literature review on a page. Such a road-map or concept map structures the literature and helps readers grasp the key threads and messages, including the theoretical positioning of your review. This review looked at the genealogy of hidden dis/ability based on Latour’s and Baudrillard’s work.

This chapter asks whether science fiction (SF) has a predisposition to a particular ethical orientation. Rather than seek a single answer to this question of SF’s ethics, Kendal examines two classic SF texts and the traditions they represent: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (1951–1953), one of the most iconic series of SF’s American “golden…[Read more]

DARE * PRURITUS MIGRANS * CC: BY-NC-ND

Spectators of the 2020/21 Olympic Games were frequently confronted with references to Japanese popular culture, particularly at the opening and closing ceremonies. However, these references to anime, manga, video games and other visual media were often so subtle that they were easy to miss unless pointed out and explained by television…[Read more]

This editorial discusses the articles published and the activities undertaken by The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship during 2021, and calls for research system-wide cultural changes and wider contextual awareness in order to make scholarly communication fairer and up to the challenges of our time.

I work with images, stories, objects and employ object-oriented Actor-Network-Theory to co-author research with my clients. This allows us to focus on untraditional but remarkable things like hope, wants and happiness. Together, we have emerged an innovative approach that attempts to match our everyday life and all of its surprises. Disability is…[Read more]

Depending on Stephen R. Donaldson’s use of genre, whether science fiction or fantasy, it modifies his essential humanism. In his science fiction, Donaldson accept a more socially embedded humanity. In his fantasy, he leans towards an interiority that is independent of social context.

Although Poul Anderson is best known for his prose, he dabbled in poetry all his life, and his historical interests led him to become a major—if unacknowledged—contributor to the twentieth-century alliterative revival. This revival, most often associated with British poets such as W. H. Auden, J. R. R. Tolkien, and C. S. Lewis, attempted to ada…[Read more]

Although alliterative poetry—a medieval Germanic meter based on similar-sounding initial stressed syllables—first flourished in Old English and Old Norse literature, a resurgence of the meter has appeared within the twentieth century. The most famous modern practitioners have been J. R. R. Tolkien, Ezra Pound, and W. H. Auden, but a wholly neg…[Read more]

“Out of Sorts: A Queer Crip in the Archive” analyzes the archive story of a queer, crip, wheelchair-using researcher at a U.S. archive. The article considers the archive as a material site where disability studies and disability history are practised; crip time and crip knowledge; the experience of feeling out of sorts; and the tension between the…[Read more]

In this article, we propose a model that combines digital storytelling with narrative practice to create a facilitated peer-to-peer experiential learning space for collective empowerment. This model was inspired by an educational intervention that utilized participatory digital comic strip making to raise students’ awareness of bullying and its c…[Read more]

What a charming smile 😉 * Artwork by PRURITUS MIGRANS * CC: BY-NC-ND

This is a reflection zine from a course I taught in Spring 2020, ENG 342: “Studies in Popular Culture,” which had a course topic of “Playful Literature and Literary Games.” My goal with this course was to teach students about the ways in which games and literature overlap, particularly through the frame of the zine — DIY print publications that…[Read more]

This is the zine-version of my syllabus from a course I taught in Spring 2020, ENG 342: “Studies in Popular Culture,” which had a course topic of “Playful Literature and Literary Games.” My goal with this course was to teach students about the ways in which games and literature overlap, particularly through the frame of the zine — DIY print…[Read more]

BIS REPETITA PLACENT! * QRt by PRURITUS MIGRANS * CC: BY-NC-SA

This paper focuses on American superhero comics – i.e. superadventures and their likeness to mythology. Our goal is to understand how subtle changes in the characterization of a superhero may make them more congruent with the present day morality and ideals of the society, even if a given character is willing to directly challenge that morality. T…[Read more]

This paper examines the responses to the 1954 BBC adaptation of Nineteen Eighty-Four, as held by the BBC Written Archives Centre, in the light of the British Horror Comics campaign of the mid-1950s.