The Vault of Culture is an edited, semi-scholarly space devoted to publishing a wide range of approaches to a variety of cultural objects, from comics to film to novels to video games and everything in between.

The Vault of Culture publishes writing aimed at a broad audience that takes a scholarly (or semi-scholarly) stance on one or more aesthetic/cultural objects, giving those writings some editorial guidance, a nice visual presentation, and a home beyond individual blogs, facebook posts, twitter, etc. We’re quite open to the kind of work people might want to do, including previously-written (or presented) or new material, one piece at a time or in series.

While the site doesn’t exclusively focus on comics studies, it had a number of quite nice pieces on comics over the last couple of years, including:

• Anna Peppard, on her love of undying superheroes, particularly Nightcrawler
• A roundtable on the “Walking Bed” Little Nemo in Slumberland strip, curated by Zach Rondinelli, from his ongoing #WelcomeToSlumberland social media project (winner of last year’s CSS prize for public scholarship)
• the U-C Comics Colloquium’s overview of COVID Chronicles
• Michael VanCalbergh, on Tillie Walden’s use of backgrounds in On a Sunbeam
• Justin Wigard, on You are Deadpool as an exemplar of a recent trend of “ludocomics”
• Kelly Williams, on the problem of adapting the Dark Phoenix Saga
• a piece I wrote on The Question #17, in which Rorschach confronts himself

In addition, the site has started a recurring “On Comics” series for close readings of specific comics and/or elaborations of recurring themes, forms, and types.

Feel free to take a look at the site and poke around. Or, like the facebook page to see new entries as they go up or follow along on twitter: @vaultofculture. If you are at all interested in participating, you can see ways to get started on the “about” page, including inquiring about one-off pieces or recurring series. Or, reply here and let me know what you’re thinking of working on.

Feel free to prompt those far and wide that might be interested in contributing—I would love this project to include a wide range of voices and approaches.

Submissions: vaultofculture@gmail.com.

Thanks for your time and attention.
Shawn Gilmore, PhD

Director of Specialized Faculty
Senior Lecturer, Department of English
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Editor, Vault of Culture [contribute | facebook | twitter