A cultural record
Principal Investigator: Prof. Jane Chapman
Research Assistant: Anna Hoyles
Research Consultant: Dan Ellin
PhD students: Adam Sherif and Andrew Kerr
Project consultant: Dr Kent Worcester
Arts and Humanities Research Council Funded Project
With the centenary of 1914-18 upon us, as well as the commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the end of World War 2, these epic events are receiving a high public profile worldwide. This timely project therefore asks the question: what is the contribution of the comic form to the cultural heritage of these global experiences & what different kinds of historical meaning emerge?
The project research & the two major exhibitions that go with it – one on World War One comics in 2014 & one on Second World War comics in 2015, both at London’s Cartoon Museum- emphasise to the heritage industry the potential of comics as a cultural artefact.
Courtesy of Cambridge University Library
Research areas include:
- Trench publications – soldiers’ own amateur newspapers featuring day to day life on the front line.
- Daily Mirror newspaper strips depicting WW1 home front concerns
- WW1 labour movement newspapers from the US, Australia and New Zealand
- Australian and American newspaper strips depicting the changing role of women during the world wars
- Comics published for US troops during WW2 featuring graphic violence
- US Golden Age comic books
- Daily Worker newspaper strips giving the British Communist Party’s view on WW2.
- Graphic novels depicting the trauma experienced by Holocaust and Hiroshima survivors.
