Invitation to Guest Lecture on Monday, November 9, 16:30 - 18:00,
SR 34.D2, Attemsgasse 25/DG, 8010 Graz
The history of U.S. American comics is fraught with stereotypical images of black American. As such, comics are not altogether different from radio, film, and other media that derived a substantial portion of their early content from comical depictions of the nation’s allegedly racially inferior folk. Part of this intense investment with racial stock figures and their powers as popular stereotypes can be traced back to blackface minstrelsy, which constituted one of the hallmarks of American popular culture in the nineteenth century. Yet despite frequent cross- and transmedia influences, each of these media has developed its own means of rendering race and ethnicity, with comics as a visual-verbal medium composed of sequential still images producing a very particular history of racialized images and narratives. This talk will offer a historical account of key forms and functions of racial stereotypes in black comics, focusing specifically on the medial affordances, limitations, and peculiarities of the comics medium from the late nineteenth-century until today.
Please find further information concerning other Guest Lecturers in Winter Term 2015/16 under the following link: Programme Guest Lecturers