A Visual-Textual Analysis of Sarah Glidden's
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BLACKOUTS MADE VISIBLE: A VISUAL-TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF SARAH GLIDDEN’S COMICS JOURNALISM _______________________________________ A Thesis presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri-Columbia _______________________________________________________ In Partial FulfillMent of the RequireMents for the Degree Master of Arts _____________________________________________________ by TYNAN STEWART Dr. Berkley Hudson, Thesis Supervisor DECEMBER 2019 The undersigned, appointed by the dean of the Graduate School, have exaMined the thesis entitleD BLACKOUTS MADE VISIBLE: A VISUAL-TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF SARAH GLIDDEN’S COMICS JOURNALISM presented by Tynan Stewart, a candidate for the degree of master of arts, and hereby certify that, in their opinion, it is worthy of acceptance. —————————————————————————— Dr. Berkley Hudson —————————————————————————— Dr. Cristina Mislán —————————————————————————— Dr. Ryan Thomas —————————————————————————— Dr. Kristin Schwain DEDICATION For my parents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS My naMe is at the top of this thesis, but only because of the goodwill and generosity of many, many others. Some of those naMed here never saw a word of my research but were still vital to My broader journalistic education. My first thank you goes to my chair, Berkley Hudson, for his exceptional patience and gracious wisdom over the past year. Next, I extend an enormous thanks to my comMittee meMbers, Cristina Mislán, Kristin Schwain, and Ryan Thomas, for their insights and their tiMe. This thesis would be so much less without My comMittee’s efforts on my behalf. TiM Vos also deserves recognition here for helping Me narrow my initial aMbitions and set the direction this study would eventually take. The Missourian newsroom has been an all-consuming presence in my life for the past two and a half years. Its dedicated, courageous, knowledgeable faculty have left an enormous positive Mark on me, and I can only hope the reverse is true. I would be reMiss not to thank the following people by naMe: Jeanne Abbott, Ruby Bailey, Liz Brixey, Mark Horvit, Mike Jenner, Katherine Reed, and Scott SwafforD. I also extend much love to my fellow Missourian ACEs, past and present, who are sMart journalists and extraordinary colleagues: Sky Chadde, Claire Colby, Brendan Crowley, Kaleigh FeldkaMp, Hannah Hoffmeister, Claire Mitzel, and Titus Wu. Solidarity, y’all. The saMe goes for My fellow graDuate students, several of whom have given me more friendship and support than I could’ve hoped for: naMely, Alexis Allison, Cary Littlejohn, and Stella Yu. ii There are numerous people outside of MU who helped shape this thesis. I owe Chris Pizzino an enormous intellectual debt for his mentorship at UGA. If I have Managed to write intelligently about comics and questions of cultural legitiMacy, I can say without exaggeration that Chris deserves most of the credit. Cynthia CaMp has provided unceasing personal support and scholarly advice, and her friendship from afar was invaluable to my survival in graDuate school. Thanks also to Esra Santesso, who I’ve naMed my “shadow comMittee meMber” for her help with postcolonial theory and her willingness to assist a student she’d never met. An extra special thanks goes to Maggie Baert for plowing through far More of my prose than anyone outside my comMittee should ever have to do. But given the sheer number of incoherent rough drafts I’ve sent her way over the past decade, what’s a few thousand more words? I deeply appreciate her friendship. Finally, I wish to recognize my parents, Kerry Stewart and Kru Fairey, to whom I dedicate this work. Thank you for everything. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................ ii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... vi Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................... 1 2. LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................................................... 7 Comics and journalisM ........................................................................................ 7 How we talk about ‘comics journalisM’ ............................................................ 22 Comics form and journalistic conventions ........................................................ 25 Constructing journalistic authority .................................................................... 31 PostcolonialisM .................................................................................................. 34 Research questions and goals ............................................................................. 42 3. METHODOLOGY ................................................................................................. 44 Close-reading comics ......................................................................................... 44 Choosing Rolling Blackouts ............................................................................... 46 Significance ........................................................................................................ 47 4. HOW ROLLING BLACKOUTS PICTURES JOURNALISM ................................ 49 Overview of analysis .......................................................................................... 49 Characters and narrative structure ..................................................................... 51 Discussion scenes ............................................................................................... 52 Visual vocabulary and graMMar ........................................................................ 54 JournalisM as ‘an expectation’ ........................................................................... 55 iv The ethics of independence ................................................................................ 60 Measuring journalistic distance ......................................................................... 66 Strategies of legitiMization ................................................................................ 70 Uncertainty as authority ..................................................................................... 78 5. ROLLING BLACKOUTS AS POSTCOLONIAL COMICS ................................... 85 Overview of analysis .......................................................................................... 85 Cross-cultural understanding ............................................................................. 88 Listening as visual practice ................................................................................ 93 Listening to subalterns ....................................................................................... 97 Making the subaltern visible ............................................................................ 102 Journalistic power/knowledge ......................................................................... 105 6. CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................... 115 SumMary of results .......................................................................................... 115 Further iMplications ......................................................................................... 116 LiMitations ....................................................................................................... 121 Future study ..................................................................................................... 122 REFERENCES ................................................................................................................ 126 APPENDIX ..................................................................................................................... 137 v BLACKOUTS MADE VISIBLE: A VISUAL-TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF SARAH GLIDDEN’S COMICS JOURNALISM Tynan Stewart Berkley Hudson, Professor of JournalisM, Thesis Supervisor ABSTRACT This thesis studies Sarah Glidden’s largely unexaMined book Rolling Blackouts as a significant contribution to the genre known as comics journalisM. It argues that Glidden’s work engages in a material struggle over the nature of journalisM by using the comics form to intervene in an ongoing debate over the field’s normative values. Glidden pictures how journalisM can be done differently and challenges mainstreaM conventions by constructing (1) a model of journalistic authority that refuses to cover over deep episteMological uncertainties and (2) a complex ethics and aesthetics of listening. In addition, this thesis reads Rolling Blackouts through the lens of postcolonial theory, analyzing the way Glidden brings journalistic abstractions into contact with Messy representational realities of transnational and interpersonal power iMbalances. Glidden is particularly concerned with refugees created by AMerican iMperialisM and how AMerican journalists—working in comics or not—can position theMselves to ethically represent these refugees. UltiMately, a close-reading of Rolling Blackouts suggests that comics journalisM’s documented concern with self-representation is less iMportant than showing the intricacy of the eMbodied relationships between a comics journalist and her sources— particularly when those sources are the world’s conteMporary subalterns. vi CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION “. I felt that comics freed me to think and iMagine and see differently.”