Eastern Kentucky University Encompass EKU Libraries Research Award for Undergraduates 2017 Undergraduate Research Award submissions Suffering Sappho! Female Friendships in Superhero Comics, 1940s to 1960s and Today Hannah R. Costelle Eastern Kentucky University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://encompass.eku.edu/ugra Recommended Citation Costelle, Hannah R., "Suffering Sappho! Female Friendships in Superhero Comics, 1940s to 1960s and Today" (2017). EKU Libraries Research Award for Undergraduates. 2. http://encompass.eku.edu/ugra/2017/2017/2 This Event is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Scholarship at Encompass. It has been accepted for inclusion in EKU Libraries Research Award for Undergraduates by an authorized administrator of Encompass. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Eastern Kentucky University Suffering Sappho! Female Friendships in Superhero Comics, 1940s to 1960s and Today Honors Thesis Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements of HON 420 Fall 2016 By Hannah Costelle Mentor Dr. Jill Parrott Department of English and Theatre i Abstract Suffering Sappho! Female Friendships in Superhero Comics, 1940s to 1960s and Today Hannah Costelle Dr. Jill Parrott, Department of English and Theatre Comic book superheroines are the goddesses of modern times; they are the ideal beautiful, powerful women of America’s collective imagination whom girls have looked up to and emulated for decades. But these iconic examples of womanhood usually lack one of the key elements of humanity that enrich real women’s lives, an element that has been proven to increase women’s autonomy and confidence: female friendships. Wonder Woman may have led armies of female friends in the 1940s when superheroines first appeared in the comics pages, but by the 1950s and ‘60s, female characters confiding in one another and working together in the comics was a rarity.