Join us on Monday, March 24, from 2 to 3:15 p.m., for “Black Bandes Dessinées in Context.”
Zoom: https://uml.zoom.us/j/98049671145
Description: When speaking of African comics, the first title that often comes to mind is Aya de Yopougon written by Marguerite Abouet and illustrated by Clément Oubrerie even though the first volume, originally published in 2005, was a boutique graphic novel published by the Paris-based literary giant Gallimard. In other words, a cultural object far removed from comics production throughout francophone Africa. In disentangling what “African” and “comics” might mean and focusing on artists’ practices throughout francophone Africa and the diaspora, this talk provides an overview of the diversity of Black bandes dessinées.
Bio: Michelle Bumatay is an Assistant Professor of French at Florida State University where she directs the Global Africas project. She specializes in African francophone and diasporic cultural production including literature, film, comics, and art. She is the 2015 recipient of the Annual Lawrence R. Schehr Memorial Award for her conference paper, “Madame Livingstone and Notre Histoire: Travels in Time,” which was subsequently published as an article in Contemporary French Civilization. Interested in questions of representation, migration, transcolonial power, and historiography, she has contributed to several anthologies (Postcolonial Comics: Texts, Events, Identities; Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spheres of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis; and Intermediality in French-Language Comics & Graphic Novels) and has articles in European Comic Art, Research in African Literatures, Francosphères, and Alternative Francophone. Her book, On Black Bandes Dessinées and Transcolonial Power (The Ohio State University Press), explores the diversity of Black francophone cartoonists’ artistic, narrative, and material practices since the 1960s and illustrates the reparative dimensions of their work.
Open to all
For more information:kristen_stern@uml.edu