NEW EDITED VOLUME | OPEN ACCESS

The Politics of Dementia. Forgetting and Remembering the Violent Past in Literature, Film and Graphic Narratives

Memory loss is not always viewed purely as a contingent neurobiological process present in an ageing population; rather, it is frequently related to larger societal issues and political debates. This edited volume examines how different media and genres – novels, auto/biographical writings, documentary as well as fictional films and graphic memoirs – represent dementia for the sake of critical explorations of memory, trauma and contested truths. The contributors analyse the ways in which what might seem to be the individual, ahistorical diseases of dementia are used in contemporary cultural texts to represent and respond to violent historical and political events – ranging from the Holocaust to postcolonial conditions – all of which can prove difficult to remember. Combining approaches from literary studies with insights from memory studies, trauma studies, anthropology, the critical medical humanities and media, film and comics studies, this open access volume explores the politics of dementia and incites new debates on cultures of remembrance, while remaining attentive to the lived reality of dementia.

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NEUERSCHEINUNG | CLOSURE-Themenheft Körperbilder im Comic: Konstruktion und Subversion

Sieben Aufsätze und ein deutsch- und englisches Editorial finden sich ab sofort als # 7.5 bei CLOSURE. Kieler e-journal für Comicforschung, hrsg. von Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff und Nina Schmidt.

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"COMICSTUDIEN": Neue interdisziplinäre Publikationsreihe im de Gruyter Verlag
Die Reihe "COMICSTUDIEN" versammelt herausragende aktuelle Beiträge zur Comicforschung aus einem breiten Spektrum verschiedener Disziplinen von Medien-, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften über (historische) Kunst- und Bildwissenschaften bis zu Ansätzen aus den Gender-, Postcolonial- und Visual Culture Studies. Sie enthält deutschsprachige oder gemischtsprachige (i.d.R. deutsch- und englischsprachige) Monographien und Sammelbände von etablierten Autor*innen und von Nachwuchswissenschaftler*innen.

Herausgegeben von Juliane Blank (Universität des Saarlandes), Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff (Freie Universität Berlin) und Véronique Sina (Universität Mainz)

Wissenschaftlicher Beirat: Ole Frahm (Frankfurt a. M.), Stephan Köhn (Köln), Marina Rauchenbacher (Wien), Marie Schröer (Potsdam), Daniel Stein (Siegen), Jan-Noël Thon (Trondheim), Janina Wildfeuer (Groningen)

Mehr Info: (Webseite) (PDF)

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NEW PUBLICATION | EDITED VOLUME

PathoGraphics. Narrative, Aesthetics, Contention, Community, a new anthology of essays based on the PathoGraphics project is now available by Penn State University Press. (Susan Merrill Squier / Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff (eds.))

Culturally powerful ideas of normalcy and deviation, individual responsibility, and what is medically feasible shape the ways in which we live with illness and disability. The essays in this volume show how illness narratives expressed in a variety of forms—biographical essays, fictional texts, cartoons, graphic novels, and comics—reflect on and grapple with the fact that these human experiences are socially embedded and culturally shaped.

Details and full list of contributors here.