UC Santa Barbara

This multi-methods dissertation explores the politics and processes of creating comics-based research and pedagogy. My central framework of “reading the margins” refers to the process of asking critical questions about the history, genealogy, and methods of comics studies, particularly as it intersects with feminism. I argue that considering feminist studies and comics studies together centers each field’s history with marginality and envisions their shared potential for making arguments through the critical and self-conscious representation of marginalized experience. Throughout this project, I examine the formal properties, stylistic conventions, and narrative patterns that make the comics medium particularly effective for feminist scholarship. I do this first through a review of examples of popular feminist educational comics, examining their use of the comics medium for feminist pedagogy through common tropes and discourse analysis. Next, I offer an original piece of feminist comics-based scholarship to demonstrate a few of these formal commitments and affordances.