This essay imagines fictional storytelling and urban practices of maintenance, repair, and care as interrelated to one another. They are both practices engaged in building a better world. Urban scholars like Gautam Bhan, Shannon Mattern, and David Harvey propose the city as a space for envisioning the kind of community we want to be—a space for working towards our collective future. By engaging in fictional storytelling, I argue, we are doing the same thing: the dual work of taking from fact and representing it to an audience while also engaging in imagining and world-building. This is also a practice of constructing, repairing, maintaining, and caring. As the essay argues, fictional storytelling draws from traditions of agitprop to imagine new futures. It also makes a case for how creators of comics can learn from urban practices to create spaces to form community and imagine a more just world through their practice.
","abstract_html":"<p>This essay imagines fictional storytelling and urban practices of maintenance, repair, and care as interrelated to one another. They are both practices engaged in building a better world. Urban scholars like Gautam Bhan, Shannon Mattern, and David Harvey propose the city as a space for envisioning the kind of community we want to be—a space for working towards our collective future. By engaging in fictional storytelling, I argue, we are doing the same thing: the dual work of taking from fact and representing it to an audience while also engaging in imagining and world-building. This is also a practice of constructing, repairing, maintaining, and caring. As the essay argues, fictional storytelling draws from traditions of agitprop to imagine new futures. It also makes a case for how creators of comics can learn from urban practices to create spaces to form community and imagine a more just world through their practice.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Susarla, Kruttika"],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Illustration & Visual Culture","degree_level":"Thesis","degree_discipline":"Graduate School of Art","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":[],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2022,"date_issued":"2022-05-20T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2022-05-20T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T06:12:17Z","subjects":["storytelling","comics","fiction comics","agitprop","urban practices","Art and Design"],"languages":["English"],"rights":[],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier.doi","label":"DOI","values":["https://doi.org/10.7936/dh51-bj32"],"render_values":[{"text":"https://doi.org/10.7936/dh51-bj32","href":"https://doi.org/10.7936/dh51-bj32","code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mfa_illustration/2","outbound_label":"Repository record","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Susarla, Kruttika"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date.available","label":"Dc Date Available","values":["2022-05-18T07:00:00Z"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Graduate School of Art"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Thesis"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Illustration & Visual Culture"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["storytelling","comics","fiction comics","agitprop","urban practices","Art and Design"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["English"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/mfa_illustration/2"]},{"key":"dc:identifier.doi","label":"DOI","values":["https://doi.org/10.7936/dh51-bj32"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description.abstract","label":"Abstract","values":["This essay imagines fictional storytelling and urban practices of maintenance, repair, and care as interrelated to one another. They are both practices engaged in building a better world. Urban scholars like Gautam Bhan, Shannon Mattern, and David Harvey propose the city as a space for envisioning the kind of community we want to be—a space for working towards our collective future. By engaging in fictional storytelling, I argue, we are doing the same thing: the dual work of taking from fact and representing it to an audience while also engaging in imagining and world-building. This is also a practice of constructing, repairing, maintaining, and caring. As the essay argues, fictional storytelling draws from traditions of agitprop to imagine new futures. It also makes a case for how creators of comics can learn from urban practices to create spaces to form community and imagine a more just world through their practice.
"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["Storytelling for a changing world: Comics as agitprop"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:creator":["Susarla, Kruttika"],"dc:date.available":["2022-05-18T07:00:00Z"],"dc:description.abstract":["This essay imagines fictional storytelling and urban practices of maintenance, repair, and care as interrelated to one another. They are both practices engaged in building a better world. Urban scholars like Gautam Bhan, Shannon Mattern, and David Harvey propose the city as a space for envisioning the kind of community we want to be—a space for working towards our collective future. By engaging in fictional storytelling, I argue, we are doing the same thing: the dual work of taking from fact and representing it to an audience while also engaging in imagining and world-building. This is also a practice of constructing, repairing, maintaining, and caring. As the essay argues, fictional storytelling draws from traditions of agitprop to imagine new futures. It also makes a case for how creators of comics can learn from urban practices to create spaces to form community and imagine a more just world through their practice.
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