Comics Theory Articles Reading List

Baetens, Jan.  “Revealing Traces: A New Theory of Graphic Enunciation.”  The Language of Comics: Word and Image.  Eds. Robin Varnum and Christina T. Gibbons.  Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi, 2002.  145-55.

Bauman, Richard.  “Introduction: Genre, Performance, and the Production of Intertextuality.”  A World of Others’ Words: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Intertextuality.  London: Blackwell, 2004.  1-14.

Beaty, Bart et al. “Critical Focus: Understanding Comics.”  The Comics Journal #211 (Apr. 1999): 57-103.

Carrier, David.  “The Speech Balloon; Or, The Problem of Representing Other Minds.”  The Aesthetics of Comics.  University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000.  27-45.

Cohn, Jesse.  “Mise-en-Page: A Vocabulary of Page Layouts.”  Teaching the Graphic Novel.  Ed. Stephen E. Tabachnick.  New York: Modern Language Association, 2009.  44-57.

Duncan, Randy and Matthew J. Smith.  “Experiencing the Story.”  The Power of Comics: History, Form, and Culture.  New York: Continuum, 2009.  153-70.

Genette, Gerard.  “Introduction.”  Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation.  Trans. Jane E. Lewin.  Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1987.  1-15.

Hague, Ian.  “Eyes Like Comics, or, Ocularcentrism in Comics Scholarship.”  Comics and the Senses: A Multisensory Approach to Comics and Graphic Novels.  London: Routledge, 2014.  9-33.

Hatfield, Charles.   “The Art of Tensions.”  Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature.  Jackson, MS: UP of Mississippi, 2005.  36-65.

Hill, Charles A. and Marguerite Helmers.  “Introduction.”  Defining Visual Rhetorics.  Eds. Charles A. Hill and Marguerite Helmers.  Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates, 2004.  1-24.

Horrocks, Dylan.  “Inventing Comics: Scott McCloud Defines the Form in Understanding Comics.”  The Comics Journal #234 (June 2001): 29-52.

Jacobs, Dale.  “More Than Words: Comics as a Means of Teaching Multiple Literacies.”  English Journal.  96.3 (January 2007): 19-25.

Jones, Matthew T.  “Reflexivity in Comic Art.”  International Journal of Comic Art 7.1 (Spring 2005): 270-86.

Kannenberg, Gene.  “Graphic Text, Graphic Context: Interpreting Custom Fonts and Hands in Contemporary Comics.”  Illuminating Letters: Typography and Literary Interpretation.  Eds. Paul C. Gutjahr and Megan L. Benton.  Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001.  165-92.

Lefèvre, Pascal.  “The Construction of Space in Comics.”  A Comics Studies Reader.  Eds. Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester.  Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2009.  157-62.

Magnussen, Anne.  “The Semiotics of C.S. Peirce as a Theoretical Framework for the Understanding of Comics.”  Comics and Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics.  Eds. Anne Magnussen and Hans-Christian Christiansen.  Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum P, 2000.  193-207.

Rabkin, Eric S.  “Reading Time in Graphic Narrative.”  Teaching the Graphic Novel.  Ed. Stephen E. Tabachnick.  New York: Modern Language Association, 2009.  36-43.

Wolk, Douglas.  “Pictures, Words, and the Space Between Them.”  Reading Comics.  New York: Da Capo Press, 2007.  118-34.