Washington University in St. Louis
Storytelling for a changing world: Comics as agitprop
Abstract
dc:description.abstract<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>
Degree
thesis:*- Name thesis:degree_name
- Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Illustration & Visual Culture
- Level thesis:degree_level
- Thesis
- Discipline thesis:degree_discipline
- Graduate School of Art
- Year dc:date.available
- 2022
Author and committee
dc:creator, dc:contributor.*- Author dc:creator
-
- Susarla, Kruttika
Subjects
dc:subject × 6Rights
- Language dc:language
- English
Identifiers
dc:identifier.*- OAI identifier oai:identifier
- oai:openscholarship.wustl.edu:mfa_illustration-1006