Dr. Biz Nijdam and Dr. Charlotte Schallié of the University of Victoria edited a special double issue of Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies. The issue, entitled “The Social Justice Work of German Comics and Graphic Literature,” is available on Project MUSE: https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/43359
“This special issue engages many of the important social justice debates that have emerged in global comics since the 1950s, while mobilizing the essential discourses of German studies. The articles thus demonstrate junctions between comics studies and gender studies, queer studies, critical race studies, disability studies, and the medical humanities within the German studies context. German comics thereby emerge as neither Schmutz- und Schundliteratur, as they have historically been demonized by academics and educators, nor, as Art Spiegelman puts it, simply “a gateway drug to literacy” (Moully 12) or accessible “authentic material” in the language classroom. Instead, the German-language comics under investigation in this special issue reveal how German comics and graphic novels offer points of intersection with the work we do in German studies as essential primary texts in the pursuance of social justice and social justice-oriented research.”
—Elizabeth Nijdam from the Introduction
