Comics and/as Resistance Project

How are stories and histories of resistance mediated through comics? How are resisters and their agency depicted? How do comics creators contest dominant narratives and formal expectations and constraints? How is ‘resistance’ conceived of and enacted within the comics medium?

In partnership with the TORCH Oxford Comics Network and the White Rose Project, the Comics and/as Resistance conference seeks to bring together a wide range of scholars and creators to explore the poetics and politics of resistance within comics and graphic literature. Comics is a highly diverse and versatile medium, able to speak across boundaries, languages, temporalities, and cultures. This kind of formal flexibility makes it a particularly potent form for mediating resistance and resistance narratives. We understand resistance as a theme in a broad sense, from acts of political defiance to cultural practices that challenge perceived hegemonies. Resistance can also be a useful concept with which to examine the way that comics as a medium engages with categorizations, ideas about cultural legitimacy, and dominant forms of storytelling and historical representation. 

The White Rose Project is a research and engagement initiative at the University of Oxford. It works to bring the story of the White Rose resistance group, ‘Die Weiße Rose’, to English-speaking audiences and supports German-learning in secondary and tertiary education.

For more information, please visit the White Rose Project website.

The TORCH  Oxford Comics Network brings students, critics and practitioners from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds to explore the power, politics and potential of the comics form.

For more information, please visit the Oxford Comics Network website.

The graduate organizers for this conference are: 

Cailee Davis – 2nd year DPhil, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Laura Bergin – 2nd year DPhil, School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography

Carolin Gluchowski – 3rd year DPhil, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages

Luise Morawetz – 3rd Year DPhil, Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages

Please direct any queries to comics@torch.ox.ac.uk.

The Comics and/as Resistance Project is part of the TORCH Critical-Thinking Communities