Visualizing Jewish Narratives

Examining a wide range of comics and graphic novels – including works by creators such as Will Eisner, Leela Corman, Neil Gaiman, Art Spiegelman, Sarah Glidden and Joe Sacco – this book explores how comics writers and artists have tackled major issues of Jewish identity and culture. With chapters written by leading and emerging scholars in contemporary comic book studies, Visualizing Jewish Narrative highlights the ways in which Jewish comics have handled such topics as: ·Biography, autobiography, and Jewish identity ·Gender and sexuality ·Genre – from superheroes to comedy ·The Holocaust ·The Israel-Palestine conflict ·Sources in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish myth Visualizing Jewish Narrative also includes a foreword by Danny Fingeroth, former editor of the Spider-Man line and author of Superman on the Couch and Disguised as Clark Kent..

Over the past several years, there has been growing scholarly interest in the relationship of Jews to the visual narratives presented in the newspaper "funnies," comic books, and graphic novels. Part of this stems from a developing focus in Jewish studies on the intersections between identity and popular culture. Comics, the argument goes, constitute one of those mass outlets, along with television and Hollywood films, in which Jews played a dominant role and were able to largely define the genre. Within literary studies, this nascent interest in Jewish comics can be linked to a broader scholarly focus on comics and the ways in which they represent ethno-racial identity, and how traditionally marginalized writers and illustrators have been able to exert increased control over representations of their own ethnic communities. Visualizing Jewish Narrative aims to examine the entire universe of comics and graphic novels from a "Jewish" perspective. The contributors explore the involvement of Jewish writers and artists and the presence of Jewish motifs in many different comic visual media. They come from different academic disciplines, adopt varying methodologies, and cover a broad swath of time (the early twentieth century to the present) and regions (Europe, America, and Israel). This broad and inclusive scope reflects the diversity found in Jewish comics and graphic novels themselves. With studies ranging from comics based on the Old Testament to golem and Talmudic imagery, Spiegelman's Maus and other Holocaust narratives, stories of immigration and assimilation, Jewish humor in Mad magazine, and the Jewishness of superheroes, this book will not only present much of interest to a general reader, but it also contains ideal supplementary materials for university courses on Jewish culture; American literature; the representation of migration, assimilation, and trauma; the graphic depiction of biblical and folkloric motifs; superheroes; and the production of humor.

Examining a wide range of comics and graphic novels – including works by creators such as Will Eisner, Leela Corman, Neil Gaiman, Art Spiegelman, Sarah Glidden and Joe Sacco – this book explores how comics writers and artists have tackled major issues of Jewish identity and culture. With chapters written by leading and emerging scholars in contemporary comic book studies, Visualizing Jewish Narrative highlights the ways in which Jewish comics have handled such topics as: ·Biography, autobiography, and Jewish identity ·Gender and sexuality ·Genre – from superheroes to comedy ·The Holocaust ·The Israel-Palestine conflict ·Sources in the Hebrew Bible and Jewish myth Visualizing Jewish Narrative also includes a foreword by Danny Fingeroth, former editor of the Spider-Man line and author of Superman on the Couch and Disguised as Clark Kent..

Jewish identity, memory, and place deftly revealed through the lens of Jewish women's graphic narratives.

This volume explores literary and material representations of Jews, Jewishness and Judaism from antiquity to the twenty-first century. Gathering leading scholars from within the field of Jewish Studies, it investigates how the debates surrounding literary and material images within Judaism and in Jewish life are part of an on-going strategy of image management - the urge to shape, direct, authorize and contain Jewish literary and material images and encounters with those images - a strategy both consciously and unconsciously undertaken within multifarious arenas of Jewish life from early modern German lands to late twentieth-century North London, late Antique Byzantium to the curation of contemporary Holocaust exhibitions.

The most up-to-date critical guide mapping the history, impact, key critical issues, and seminal texts of the genre, Jewish Comics and Graphic Narratives interrogates what makes a work a "Jewish graphic narrative", and explores the form's diverse facets to orient readers to the richness and complexity of Jewish graphic storytelling. Accessible but comprehensive and in an easy-to-navigate format, the book covers such topics as: - The history of the genre in the US and Israel - and its relationship to superheroes, Underground Comix, and Jewish literature - Social and cultural discussions surrounding the legitimization of graphic representation as sites of trauma, understandings of gender, mixed-media in Jewish graphic novels, and the study of these works in the classroom - Critical explorations of graphic narratives about the Holocaust, Israel, the diasporic experience, Judaism, and autobiography and memoir - The works of Will Eisner, Ilana Zeffren, James Sturm, Joann Sfar, JT Waldman, Michel Kichka, Sarah Glidden, Rutu Modan, and Art Spiegelman and such narratives as X Men, Anne Frank's Diary, and Maus Jewish Comics and Graphic Novels includes an appendix of relevant works sorted by genre, a glossary of crucial critical terms, and close readings of key texts to help students and readers develop their understanding of the genre and pursue independent study.

Holocaust Graphic Narratives examines Holocaust graphic novels and memoirs, analyzing the genre as one that enables intergenerational transmission of trauma and memory. Here, the graphic novel becomes a medium uniquely positioned to create a sense of felt immediacy, urgency, and authenticity at the intersection of history and the imagination.