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 humour 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 humour.
Derek Parker Royal is the founder of the Philip Roth Society as well as founding executive editor of the peer-reviewed journal Philip Roth Studies. He is the coauthor of Philip Roth's American Pastoral (2011) as well as the editor of Philip Roth: New Perspectives on an American Author (2005) and Unfinalized Moments: Essays in the Development of Contemporary Jewish American Narrative (2011). His essays on American literature and comics have appeared in such journals as Contemporary Literature, Modern Fiction Studies, Modern Drama, Studies in the Novel, Critique, MELUS, Shofar, Studies in American Jewish Literature, ImageTexT, International Journal of Comic Art, The Mark Twain Annual, and Poe Studies/Dark Romanticism. He also is the cohost and producer of the weekly comics podcast The Comics Alternative.
"This book is an important contribution to scholarship in the fields of Jewish studies, visual arts, and humor. The scholarship is most definitely sound, and the contributors are clearly experts in their respective fields. Many of the topics have not been examined in such depth before, and certainly not in one volume. It is a terrific starting point for anyone interested in the place of the Jews, Judaism, and "Yiddishkeit" in visual print culture." --Jarrod Tanny, University of North Carolina "This book is an important contribution to scholarship in the fields of Jewish studies, visual arts, and humor. The scholarship is most definitely sound, and the contributors are clearly experts in their respective fields. Many of the topics have not been examined in such depth before, and certainly not in one volume. It is a terrific starting point for anyone interested in the place of the Jews, Judaism, and "Yiddishkeit" in visual print culture." Jarrod Tanny, University of North Carolina
