Am kommenden Freitag organisiert und moderiert ComFor-Mitglied Elizabeth ‚Biz‘ Nijdam für das German Studies Association’s Comic Studies Network eine Diskussionsrunde im Goethe-Institut Montreal mit der Comic-Künstlerin Birgit Weyhe und Dr. Priscilla Layne (UNC-Chapel Hill) über ihre Zusammenarbeit an Rude Girl (2022). Beteiligt sind außerdem der UBC Comic Studies Cluster sowie das Department of Classics, Modern Languages, and Linguistics an der Concordia University. Für Interessierte ist eine Online-Registrierung und -beteiligung möglich, zu der herzlich geladen wird.
Ankündigungstext:
„In 2018, Birgit Weyhe joined a room of German comics scholars at a GSA (German Studies Association) panel on diversity and inclusion in German-language comics to bear witness to a presentation by Dr. Brett Sterling that openly criticized her graphic novel Madgermanes (2016) for its representation of Blackness and cultural appropriation. While this commentary was far from welcome, it marked the start of the author’s journey in revaluating her power and privilege as a comics artist. Soon thereafter, Weyhe met Dr. Priscilla Layne, an Associate Professor of German Weyhe und Layne in MontrealStudies at UNC-Chapel Hill with Caribbean roots. Over the course of the next few years, Weyhe and Layne collaborated on the graphic novel Rude Girl (2022), which explore Layne’s life growing up in Chicago, experience of racism, and path to German studies, all the while interrogating what it means for a White artist to represent Black lives.
This panel will take the form of a conversation with the co-creators of Rude Girl, discussing Layne and Weyhe’s collaboration and the role of comics in intersectional explorations of Black identity.“