Drawing Support: Graphic Narratives and Resistance

Recorded February 29, 2024. In this latest event in the Literature
& Resistance series, we explore role comic books and graphic
novels are playing in reflecting and critiquing some of the most
pressing contemporary issues, and in fostering community and
inspiring activism among their readers. From his perspective as a
critic, Dr Dom Davies (City University, London) will discuss comics
that suggest ways of looking at war and displacement in the Middle
East, including the current conflict in Gaza. The writer and artist
Timothy Poisson will discuss why comics are his medium of choice
for storytelling and activism, reflecting on his work representing
the LGBTQ+ community.   This event was inspired by the visit
of the Egyptian comics artist Deena Mohamed to the Hub as a guest
of the Centre for Resistance Studies in May 2023.   Dr Dom
Davies is a Senior Lecturer in English at City, University of
London, where he currently directs the BA and MA English
programmes. He holds a DPhil and British Academy Postdoctoral
Fellowship from the University of Oxford. He has written
extensively on the representation of infrastructure in literature,
culture, and the visual arts, particularly comics and graphic
narratives. He is the author of Urban Comics: Infrastructure and
the Global City in Contemporary Graphic Narratives (2019) and
co-editor of Documenting Trauma in Comics (2020). His most recent
book is a trade non-fiction title, The Broken Promise of
Infrastructure (2023), and he is currently co-authoring a monograph
with Professor Candida Rifkind that is called Graphic Refuge:
Visuality and Mobility in Refugee Comics (forthcoming 2024). More
information about his work is available at www.drdomdavies.com.
  Timothy Poisson is an American writer and artist of comic
books and graphic novels under the pen name Tim Fish. He’s living
in Ireland with a Fulbright grant in affiliation with the
Department of History at TCD to research his next graphic novel.
 His work has been published by Marvel, Vertigo, Dark Horse,
Image, and independently. His last graphic novel, Liebestrasse (as
co-creator and illustrator) was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award
and named by the American Libraries Association on their official
list of best graphic novels in 2022. He currently runs a Young
Adult webcomic Please Say It! set in the 1980s, with the mission to
inspire activism today. You can visit Tim’s site at
www.timfishworks.com. Learn more at:
https://www.tcd.ie/trinitylongroomhub/