German Graphic Narratives and Trauma

<b>This volume explores the representation of political racial sexual and environmental trauma in German-language graphic narratives which has thus far received little scholarly attention.</b><br><br><br>In recent decades as graphic novels have exploded in popularity and have increasingly been engaged with by scholarship there has been a marked increase in comics that deal with traumatic experiences. These experiences arise variously from warfare genocide terrorism racism sexual violence domestic violence illness disability migration natural disasters or climate-change among other causes. Indeed scholars including Hillary Chute and Gillian Whitlock have argued that graphic narratives are particularly well-suited to portraying traumatic experiences through the lens of individual memories.<br><br>This edited volume builds on the emergent body of work on the representation of trauma in graphic narratives but focuses exclusively on German-language graphic narratives whose exploration of trauma has so far received little scholarly attention. Essays dealing with theoretical and conceptual concerns are joined by analyses of individual creators of graphic narratives including Olivia Vieweg and Volker Reiche. In addition there are transcribed conversations among the contributors to the graphic story compilation <i>But I Live</i> Miriam Libicki Gilad Seliktar and Barbara Yelin and between Birgit Weyhe creator of the graphic narratives <i>Madgermanes </i>and <i>Rude Girl </i>and the Germanist Priscilla Layne who is the model for the main character in the latter book. A final essay looks back further with a critical appraisal of the poet Rolf-Dieter Brinkmann's sampling of comics in his late 1960s <i>Popliteratur </i>works.