This event is part of the 2022-23 Mellon Sawyer Seminar, "Racial Reckoning through Comics." In addition to a year-long intensive seminar with local participants, this Sawyer Seminar will feature a series of public presentations by prominent visiting creators and scholars, a film series, workshops, podcasts, and other public events, all of which will critically engage questions of racial representation in the popular international formats of comics.

To begin our year-long Mellon Sawyer Seminar devoted to “Racial Reckoning Through Comics,” we ask—“How do we look?” Who, this question implicitly asks, are “we”? Does “how we look” involve how we view others or how we are viewed? Do we look—or are we looked at—with affection and respect or distrust and fear? This reciprocity is further complicated by larger historical and cultural forces, including popular culture. On one hand, mainstream comics routinely perpetuate negative racial and ethnic stereotypes through visual representation. On the other, comics increasingly offer empowering narratives and histories of marginalized people and events. Coming together as comics artists and scholars of comics, our prominent visitors will help us explore this tension through their own critical and creative work, perspectives, and experiences.

"How Do We Look?" Schedule:

Friday, Sept. 9

10–11 a.m. Coffee and Welcome

11 a.m. – noon. Frederick Luis Aldama (University of Texas, Austin): "Geometrizing Ethnoracial Formation Narratives in BIPOC Teen Comics"

Noon–2 p.m. Lunch Break

2–3 p.m. Stacey Robinson (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign): "Calculating the Sensory Aesthetics of Black Liberation"

4–5 p.m. Reception 

Saturday, Sept. 10

11 a.m. – noon. Rebecca Wanzo (Washington University, St. Louis): "Redrawing the Western Canon: Race, Identification, and 'High' Art in Comics"

Noon–2 p.m. Lunch Break

2–3 p.m. Bishakh Som (Brooklyn, New York), "Trans/Migration: Explorations in Gender, Culture and Identity through Comics"

4–5 p.m. Panel discussion

Free and open to all. This is an in-person event, but it will also be livestreamed at https://www.youtube.com/user/thelibrarychannel.

Image credit: Bishakh Som, Scenes from a Gender