Title: Unreliable Narration in Superhero Comics
Speaker: Daniel Stein
Date& Time: September 22 (Thursday), 2022, 20:00-21:30
Zoom Conference Number: 257-399-8249
Password: D##U55
Hosted by: School of Foreign Studies of Jilin University
Speaker Bio: Daniel Stein is Dean of the College of Arts and Humanities at University of Siegen, University, and Professor of North American Literature and Cultural Studies. He is the author of Licensed Superhero Comics: On the Evolution of the Popular Serialized Genre (2021), co-editor of Multi-Volume Comics and Graphic Storytelling (Including Comics and Video Games: From Mixed Media to Transmedia Expansion)(2021) and Transnational Perspectives on Graphic Storytelling: Comics at the Crosswords(2013) and editor of Anglia: Journal of English Philology and Anglia Book Series(De Gruyter). Currently Prof. Stein is working on book projects: Strange Fruit and Bitter Roots: Black History in Contemporary Graphic Narratives.
Seminar Abstract: The American Superhero Comic Series present special challenges to narrative methods. A case in point is the well-established concept, the “unreliable narrator”. People should not talk about unreliable narrators but unreliable narratives in the context of Superhero Comics. Because even in literary texts, the concept of a unified, anthropomorphic image of narrators is far from unproblematic, and in comics, it is totally misleading, let alone in Superhero Comics. That’s because in Superhero Comics, narration is divided into word layer and image layer, which are closely intertwined. But in most cases, the two layers are produced separately by different authors or teams. Though words and images in comics often interact, many media-specific differences and divisions of responsibility remain.
