Drawing the Past Volume 2

Contributions by Dorian L. Alexander Chris Bishop David Budgen Lewis Call Lillian Céspedes González Dominic Davies Sean Eedy Adam Fotos Michael Goodrum Simon Gough David Hitchcock Robert Hutton Iain A. MacInnes Malgorzata Olsza Philip Smith Edward Still and Jing Zhang <p/> In <i>Drawing the Past Volume 2: Comics and the Historical Imagination in the World</i> contributors seek to examine the many ways in which history worldwide has been explored and (re)represented through comics and how history is a complex construction of imagination reality and manipulation. Through a close analysis of such works as <i>V for Vendetta</i> <i>Maus</i> and <i>Persepolis</i> this volume contends that comics are a form of mediation between sources (both primary and secondary) and the reader. Historical comics are not drawn from memory but offer a nonliteral interpretation of an object (re)constructed in the creator's mind. Indeed when it comes to history stretching the limits of the imagination only serves to aid in our understanding of the past and through that understanding shape ourselves and our futures. <p/> This volume the second in a two-volume series is divided into three sections: History and Form Historical Trauma and Mythic Histories. The first section considers the relationship between history and the comic book form. The second section engages academic scholarship on comics that has recurring interest in the representation of war and trauma. The final section looks at mythic histories that consciously play with events that did not occur but nonetheless inflect our understanding of history. Contributors to the volume also explore questions of diversity and relationality addressing differences between nations and the cultural historical and economic threads that bind them together however loosely and however much those bonds might chafe. <p/>Together both volumes bring together a range of different approaches to diverse material and feature remarkable scholars from all over the world.