Coming of Age Through Bande dessinée

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 51-73

This interview with Belgian-Israeli graphic novelist and political cartoonist Michel Kichka covers his growing up in Belgium during the Golden Age of bande dessinée. The author discusses his early readings and influences, as well as the development of his own career in teaching and drawing. The discussion focuses in particular on the creation and publication of his graphic novels Deuxième Génération [Second Generation] and Falafel sauce piquante [Falafel with Spicy Sauce], published in 2012 and 2018. These works foreground essential questions about Kichka’s experience as a second-generation Holocaust survivor and about his relationship with Israel. Taking an international perspective, the interview sheds further light on the emergence of the comics medium in Israel and the transnational reception of Franco-Belgian bande dessinée. It also considers Kichka’s work and engagement as a political cartoonist. Interview conducted via email, following Michel Kichka’s keynote at the “Tradition and Innovation in Franco-Belgian bande dessinée” conference.

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
Laurence Grove

Following the first Glasgow gathering in June 1999, further bande dessinée conferences saw the creation of IBDS (2001), plans for a new journal (2005, with European Comic Art first appearing in 2008) and a shared gathering with the Graphic Novels and Comics Conference (2011 onwards). The initial part of this overview will be an unashamed nostalgia-fest as we look back on IBDS events from 1999 to 2019. As befits a good comic, the fun will nonetheless lead to more serious considerations. The evolution of IBDS stands as a marker of the evolution of comics studies, both in terms of the variety of works studied and approaches taken, and with respect to the acceptance of the discipline (if it is such). More generally, a retrospective on the last twenty years allows us to question the very nature of the canon – literary or otherwise – as it now stands, and to look forward speculatively to the developments of future decades.


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 20-40
Author(s):  
J. Javier Torres-Fernández

This study deals with Coraline (2002), the novel by Neil Gaiman, and Coraline (2009), the animated adaptation directed by Henry Selick based on Gaiman’s book. While Gothic stories often emphasize and question human morality, children’s literature usually holds a moralizing value. Neil Gaiman’s Coraline presents a story within the genre of children’s literature that seems to be deeply rooted in the Gothic tradition. Some of the fundamental gothic elements in Coraline’s story are the presence of ghosts, grotesque beings, and the existence of a parallel and dark universe that serves as the setting for the story. Coraline deals with anxieties related with personal development, growing up, and the environments that surround her. Gothic content within both the book and the film contribute to the undermining of the idealization of Coraline’s family, her own process of growing up, and her coping with moving to a completely different place. The creation of the gothic world is exploited in both works to represent Coraline’s coming-of-age experience and her conflict with her family. However, despite Selick’s film being a faithful and well-delivered adaptation of Gaiman’s novel, there are considerable differences that affect how the audience interprets Coraline as a character and her story, which this analysis will highlight.


Author(s):  
Elisabeth Schimpfössl

Chapter 7 focuses on the upbringing of the second generation of the Russian bourgeoisie. As the first generation of wealthy Russians grows older, they are becoming more aware of their own mortality and are preparing to hand over their wealth to the next generation. It seems that rich Russians are yet to find a convincing narrative to justify their children’s legitimate entitlement to wealth that does not contradict their own everyday ideology of being self-made. Nevertheless, a two-pronged approach is emerging. First, in line with the shift toward new modesty, children are being encouraged to cultivate a habitus of privilege, as Sherman suggests in the case with wealthy US Americans, which makes them appear morally worthy in an environment marked by extreme inequality. Second, via their philanthropy the rich are supporting institutions and scholars in an effort to strengthen a dynamic capitalist environment in which privileged status is respected.


1994 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 770-792 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helen S. Ettlinger

Fifteenth Century Italy has been called both the “golden age of bastards” and the “age of golden bastards.” But while scholars from Jacob Burckhardt to Lauro Martines have decried princely infidelity and the political problems resulting from the promotion of the inevitable bastards, they have not discussed a central character in the creation of such situations: the mother of those bastards or, more properly, the mistress of the prince. “Golden bastards,” male and female, could not have existed without the tacit cooperation of noble women and the men who protected them – husbands, fathers, and brothers. And herein lies a conundrum. Paternal, spousal, and/or fraternal consent to an illicit relationship which was, at best, a tenuous claim on the generosity of a prince might appear to violate the model constructed by family historians of a society concerned with preserving the honor of their women in order to enhance the family's position through advantageous marital alliances of the virgin daughters.


2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 89-95
Author(s):  
Fransiska Louwagie ◽  
Benoît Crucifix

Ewa Stańczyk, ed., Comic Books, Graphic Novels and the Holocaust: Beyond Maus. (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2020). 142 pp. ISBN: 9780367585921 (£29.59)Vittorio Frigerio, Bande dessinée et littérature: Intersections, fascinations, divergences (Macerata: Quodlibet, 2018). 96 pp. ISBN: 9788822902573 (€10.00)


Author(s):  
Rachel F. Seidman

The seven women in this section were born between 1966 and 1976, at the height of the burgeoning feminist movement. They discuss not only the impact of feminism on their own lives, but on their mothers as well. Some reflect on whether or not the world is a better place for their daughters than when they were growing up. Coming of age in the 1980s and 90s, these interviewees reached maturity during the rise of Reagan Republicanism and what Susan Faludi termed the “backlash” against feminism. None of these women set out at the beginning of their careers to be professional feminists; it never crossed their minds as a possibility. About half of the women in this chapter have been involved in one way or another with the intersecting worlds of journalism, academia, social media, and business, and half—all of them women of color—have worked in direct-service and non-profit organizations. With long careers and experience in a variety of contexts, these women help us understand how feminism has changed over the past twenty years, where the movement is headed, and some of the reasons why even those who undertake its work do not always embrace it wholeheartedly.


Author(s):  
Ushashi Dasgupta

This chapter explores the significance of rented spaces in the nineteenth-century Bildungsroman, reading David Copperfield and Great Expectations alongside novels by Catherine Gore and WM Thackeray. Some of the most memorable characters in these coming-of-age narratives are landlords and landladies, who act as mentors to the protagonist as he tries to find his place in the world. Dickens interrogates the idea that it is a rite of passage for a young man to take lodgings before he moves into a private house. The chapter reveals that Dickens uses spatial and architectural metaphors, including images drawn from the world of tenancy, to articulate the process of growing up. It ends with a section on the window tax debate of the 1840s and 1850s and the traces it leaves in the fiction of the period; the window is a site charged with symbolism for characters preoccupied with their ‘prospects’.


2018 ◽  
pp. 183-221
Author(s):  
Thomas H. Conner

This chapter looks at the longer aftermath of WWII and traces the creation of the second generation of ABMC sites. Focusing on the process of securing grounds overseas, allowing family members to decide where their loved ones would be buried, and obtaining US government clearance on designs, the account is reminiscent of the start of the ABMC and its first project. By 1960, fourteen cemetery memorials had been dedicated. This chapter also highlights the leadership of the agency’s second chairman, General George C. Marshall, and his direction of the building of memorials in eight countries to remember the 400,000 Americans who had died and the 16 million who had served in WWII. Marshall’s high standing in the US government and in the public esteem, just as was true of Pershing, greatly helped the agency to fulfill its renewed mission. The special treatment shown the grave of General George S. Patton in the Luxembourg American Cemetery is also detailed.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document