Dr. Biz Nijdam was awarded a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship for her work on a book manuscript under the supervision of Dr. Paul Malone at the University of Waterloo.
Her postdoctoral project, the book manuscript for Paneled Pasts: History, Media, and Memory in the German Graphic Novel (under contract with Ohio State University Press), examines how comics have become an important form for the representation of East German experience. Analyzing twelve graphic novels themetizing life in the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Dr. Nijdam assess how the comics medium negotiates the divide between history and memory at the intersection of text and image. Engaging comics studies and media studies theory, her book project investigates how comics and graphic novels have intervened in debates on the politics of German unification and the representation of East German identity, arguing that interpretations of historical events in the comics medium – even when fictionalized – are an important avenue for imparting historical experience.
