about trans comic/zines in the DIY scene
this is a site that hosts research related to my dissertation project, “Transness is a prayer for something better”: Trans world-making strategies in comics/zines. on this page you can read about the project, who i am, and what you'll find on here.
about "Trans world-making strategies in comics/zines"
my research focuses on mainly contemporary trans cartoonists who distribute their work at, or participate in, comic shows/zine fests in north america. i use the phrase "world-making" to describe the political nature of this work, from the politics of representation to how trans artists build community through the creation and distribution of their/each other's work. i decided to focus on shows/fests as i think (speaking as a tran artist myself) these spaces have a specific function, as a physical space artists can come together and build relationships and share work.
i like to call my research process collaging: i draw from academic, activist, artistic and archival sources, with the political spirit of world-making being my constant throughline. in addition, a major part of my project is interviews with other trans creators. i'm deeply indebted to oral history approaches and best practices for these interviews, and you can learn more about that on the interviews section of this website.
about this site
this website collects several key components of my research for the purposes of archiving and sharing that work with others. here is a brief overview:
- Interviews: this section hosts interviews with trans cartoonists. each interview has an accompanying transcript and metadata on the interview page. interviewees retain rights to their interviews unless otherwise noted on the rights section of each interview page, and can ask me to remove or edit an interview at any time.
- Blog: this section is a collection of my writing related to the project, built using zonelets. i'm going to try to write little posts to go with each interview as well. disclaimer: this is not meant to be "academic" writing - the blog is more loose/freeform. you're welcome to reference it though!
- Links: this is a section for linking to other cool, related webpages and sources, including related to this site's design and code. i'm also open to suggestions! as soon as i figure out a good way to make that happen i will update this page lol
the base code for the index and about pages are by EGGRAMEN. the background image is one from sadgrl.online that i edited to match the site theming. for more coding/webmastery related links check out the links page!
about me
me at SPX in 2023 in full gremlin mode
i also do a podcast, drawing a dialogue with cathy g. johnson. it's a comic studies podcast, loosely, and we cover everything from comics history to queer theory to the history of censorship to the comics that influenced us as kids.