Abstract of Research Paper

In our current media age, a proliferation of images and stories of atrocity have made it almost impossible to comprehend the violence that they depict and the suffering experienced by the people in them. This dissertation is an exploration of graphic narrative, and how it can reinstate reader engagement with the pain of others, and how Maus, The Photographer and Palestine, all respond to the moral questions surrounding the representation of conflict. It will look specifically at how the complex construction of the graphic novel’s pages, where a sense of time is created through the spatial layout of panels, ensures an accurate portrayal of the temporalities of violence and trauma. How the visual-verbal hybridity of the medium demands a constructively critical engagement from the reader. And finally, how the moral problematics of representing suffering from a position of privilege are managed in all three texts. Ultimately then, this dissertation intends to outline the advantages of graphic narrative, and the ways in which it is an effect device for representing and understanding stories which concern others’ experiences of trauma.

Link to Full Paper:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Ny89mlm0agol9EXWdq93pRfqzF_-lopR/view?usp=sharing