Graphic History: Essays on Graphic Novels And/As History

When it comes to recounting history, issues arise as to whose stories are told and how reliable is the telling. This collection of fourteen essays explores the unique ways in which graphic novels can aid us in addressing those issues while shedding new light on a variety of texts, including those by canonical North American and European writers Art Spiegelman (Maus, In the Shadow of No Towers), Alan Moore (From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen), Frank Miller (The Dark Knight Returns), Chris Ware (Jimmy Corrigan), Chester Brown (Louis Riel), and Harvey Pekar. Recognizing the global appeal of graphic novels, this collection also provides a fresh look at history seen through the eyes of canonical non-Western writers Marjane Starapi (Persepolis) and Yoshihiro Tatsumi (A Drifting Life) and the highly vexed relationship of the West and the Middle East. The array of contributors (from the fields of art, literature, history, and cultural studies) is matched by the array of theoretical perspectives and by the depth and breadth of subjects, ranging from the sixteenth century voyages of Sebastian Cabot to Jack the Ripper, from the Chicago World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 to lynching in the early twentieth-century American South, and from post-war Japan to the fall of the Shah in Iran.

Richard Iadonisi received his PhD in American Literature from Indiana University and is currently teaching at Grand Valley State University. He has published and presented on Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, Jack Jackson’s Los Tejanos, and images of Asia in American comics from 1945 to the present. In addition, he has published articles on Robert Frost, Richard Wright, and Amy Lowell.