Gray, Brenna Clarke

Bitch Planet, a feminist satire of exploitation comics and films by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro, explicitly subverts this traditional comic book paradigm throughout its run, but nowhere more assertively than in issue #6, which begins with a trigger warning exhorting the reader to assess her comfort level with the upcoming flashback story that will address sexual violence. This page de-centres the aggressor, instead positioning the survivor of sexual violence at the centre of the comic reading experience. Using trauma theory and the existing body of work on ‘fridged’ women in comics, as well as reflecting on the history of the trigger warning as it has been used in comics to this point, we argue that issue #6 represents a significant shift in the way comics approach marginalized readers, even given the difficulties of presenting ‘warnings’ within the context of mainstream comics art.

Conference paper presented at the <a href="http://www.caclals.ca/doku.php?id=caclals_conferences">CACLALS (Canadian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies)</a>, 2016. Last year, I presented some preliminary thoughts on how Canadianness is coded on the page in mainstream — meaning not indie; think Marvel, not D&Q — comics designed primarily for the American market, and in particular how Indigenous bodies are used as a short-hand for Canadianness, tracing this heritage from Nelvana of the North from the WWII-era Canadian Whites comics all the way to 2014’s Justice League Unlimited run by Canadian indie-artist-turned-big-2-superstar Jeff Lemire. Today’s paper builds on that work as I continue to interrogate how Canadian identity is constructed and exploited in mainstream American media for thematic ends, and what identities are appropriated and issues elided in the process.

Conference paper presented at the <a href="https://accute.ca/accute-conference/">ACCUTE (Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English)</a>conference, Calgary 2016. Last year at Congress, I presented a paper titled “Off the Sides of Our Desks: Research in a Community College Context” on a Professional Issues panel here at ACCUTE. I’m heartened to be asked back to this panel to discuss these issues further as part of a larger conversation about teaching-centred work in the academy, and I’m grateful to the organizers for the opportunity. I think we are at a crossroads in the profession wherein we can either find a way to support teaching-focused academics in remaining part of the scholarly conversation, or risk losing recent PhD graduates from our community. This short paper is a bit of a meditation on why that is, and what comes next.

Conference paper presented at the <a href="https://accute.ca/accute-conference/">ACCUTE (Association of Canadian College and University Teachers of English)</a>, Calgary 2016. Literary scholars were among the earliest adopters of digital dissemination of research; indeed, the field of Digital Humanities is populated heavily by people with PhDs in English, especially from areas like Renaissance literature where a large body of material is available in open source formats. As the Digital Humanities have expanded and other fields have embraced digital culture for dissemination of information, new issues around publishing and peer review, including the utility of open access journals, have emerged. These venues for publication and conversation offer a democratic approach to scholarly debate, often engaging academics and non-academics alike, and demanding acknowledgement of fan communities and their unique approaches to the close readings of texts. This intersection can frustrate traditionally-trained academics, but it can also enrich academic conversations and help connect the scholarship of literature to the real-world experiences of readers.

Douglas Coupland is one of Canada’s most successful novelists, and he is also an important cultural critic and visual artist. In this, Coupland’s first academic interview in a prolific twenty-year career, the artist offers his unique perspective on everything from the broad cultural significance of the A&E television series Hoarders to the inclusion of Generation X in the CBC’s Canada Reads competition. Coupland candidly discusses his ambivalent relationship with Canadian literature, eventually touching on his biography of Marshall McLuhan and on being considered for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He explains the centrality of death in his work and his belief in the idea that anything can be made into art. As he contemplates questions of audience, irony, and influence, he looks back on an accomplished career and on the way technology and history – both his own personal history and North American history – has shaped his body of work thus far.