Last week, I gave a talk on 1990s lesbian comics to a packed room of art students at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL. Following the talk, their questions quickly followed a theme–they wanted to know where could they find these comics and where they could read queer comics today.
Resource: Open-Access Digitized Grassroots Media
I often teach archivally-focused undergraduate and graduate seminars where students research the visual culture of American progressive grassroots media (1960s-1990s), focusing in on feminist and LGBTQ periodicals. We examine cover graphics, comics, drawings, photographs, advertisements, typography, layout, and other elements of the periodicals’ visual aesthetics.
Resource: Ten Reasons to Study Comics at UF & in Gainesville
The University of Florida is known for being the first institution in the US to offer comics studies as a course of study, and it continues to be one of the premier places to study comics. The late Dr. Donald Ault was responsible for developing UF as an important hub of comics studies, but many faculty and students have further built that tradition in the decades since. The following list gives you a sense of the many and varied opportunities for engaging comics that move beyond the department and the university.
Reading List Selection Process
Pedagogy/Resource: Recommendation Letter Guidelines
Pedagogy/Resource: Archival Research, Grants & Resources
Note: I initially developed this resource guide for my Spring 2018 graduate seminar, “Graphic Archives,” which I taught in the English Department at the University of Florida. This course focused on “active theoretical conversations around radical archives and materials that have emerged over the past few years,” so the resources below skew heavily in that direction, prioritizing spaces of queer visual culture informed by my own archival research.
Pedagogy/Resource: Archival Research in NYC
This post, created originally for the “Rise of Graphic Archives” first-year research seminar that I teach, contains information about NYC-area archives and finding guides. This list is far from exhaustive, but should get you started thinking about what and where you might research. If you come across information that belongs on this list, feel free to share.