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“Cambridge Studies in Graphic Narratives” series launches

By John Freeman on August 15, 2023

The first two books in the new “Cambridge Studies in Graphic Narratives” series from Cambridge University Press are available now.

The range launched last month Drawing from the Archives, by Benoît Crucifix, and The Rise of the Graphic Novel by Alexander Dunst.

This series has been established to give readers access to the latest ground breaking research on graphic narrative. Combining meticulously researched historical studies with new theoretically rich critical engagements, it will publish the leading scholars at work today.

Graphic narrative – the study of both comics and graphic novels, as well as other associated text-image materials – is a deliberately open approach that invites a move away from sterile, and too insider, discussions on the definition of forms.

Works published in the series will be focused on Anglophone and North American graphic narrative but will also explore where that milieu is central to the developments of ‘world’ graphic narrative.

“The series will upgrade notions of where graphic narrative has come from and where it is going next,” say the publishers. “It will provide original re-interpretation of classic works and bring to new attention missing masterpieces now ripe for re-evaluation. It opens a new conversation on how text and image combine to tell powerful stories that really matter.

“In a period of significant change in how texts and images are consumed via digital platforms, the series is intended to be a research landmark that will shape scholarly thinking and teaching through the 2020s.”

This new series’ General Editors are Jan Baetens, of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium; Hugo Frey, University of Chichester; and Martha Kuhlman, Bryant University, Rhode Island.

Following Art Spiegelman’s declaration that “the future of comics is in the past,” Drawing from the Archives, by Benoît Crucifix considers comics memory in the contemporary North American graphic novel. Cartoonists such as Chris Ware, Seth, Charles Burns, Daniel Clowes, and others have not only produced some of the most important graphic novels, they have also turned to the history of comics as a common visual heritage to pass on to new readers.

This book is a full-length study of contemporary cartoonists when they are at work as historians: it offers a detailed description of how they draw from the archives of comics history, examining the different gestures of collecting, curating, reprinting, forging, swiping, and undrawing that give shape to their engagement with the past. In recognizing these different acts of transmission, this book argues for a material and vernacular history of how comics are remembered, shared, and recirculated over time.

Benoît Crucifix is Assistant Professor Cultural Studies at KU Leuven and researcher at the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR), working on the FED-tWIN ‘Pop Heritage’ project. He coedited Comics Memory: Archives and Styles (2018) and Abstraction and Comics (2019). He is a member of ACME and a coeditor for the journal Comicalités.

The Rise of the Graphic Novel by Alexander Dunst brings digital humanities methods to the study of comics. This monograph traces the emergence of the graphic novel at the intersection of popular and literary culture.

Based on a representative corpus of over 250 graphic novels from the United States, Canada, and Great Britain, it shows how the genre has built on the visual style of comics while adopting selected features of the contemporary novel. This argument positions the graphic novel as a crucial case study for our understanding of twenty-first-century culture.

More than simply a niche format, graphic novels demonstrate how contemporary literature reworks elements of genre narrative, reconfiguring rather than abolishing distinctions between high and low. The book also puts forward a new historical periodization for the graphic novel, centered on integration into the literary marketplace and leading to an explosive growth in page length and a diversification of aesthetic styles.

Alexander Dunst teaches American Studies at Paderborn University. His research focuses on twentieth-century cultural history, the digital humanities, and contemporary US literature. He is the author of Madness in Cold War America (2016) and coedited the essay collection Empirical Comics Research (2018).

• Drawing from the Archives, by Benoît Crucifix | ISBN 9781009250931 | Buy it from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)

• The Rise of the Graphic Novel by Alexander Dunst| ISBN 9781009182935 | Buy it from AmazonUK (Affiliate Link)

• There’s more information about this series here on the Cambridge University Press website

With thanks to Paul Gravett

John Freeman

The founder of downthetubes, which he established in 1998. John works as a comics and magazine editor, writer, and on promotional work for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He is currently editor of Star Trek Explorer, published by Titan – his third tour of duty on the title originally titled Star Trek Magazine.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine, Babylon 5 Magazine, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics. He has also edited several comic collections, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”.

He’s the writer of “Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies” for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs” with Dave Hailwood.