The next time your kid says that a comic book or a graphic novel is not only art, but literature, believe them. Washington University professor Rebecca Wanzo has elevated comics to the heights of literary criticism with her recent book, “The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging” (NYU Press, 2020), which won the 2021 Katherine Singer Kovacs Award. Not only that, she also found out about a museum dedicated to cartoons and comics, and other academics with similar interests.
Wanzo is chair and professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Wash U. and an affiliate professor of American Culture Studies. The native of Dayton, Ohio, came to St. Louis in 2011 after earning her Ph.D. at Duke and her B.A. at Miami University, and working at Ohio State University. “Like most academics, I’ve moved around,” she said.
Wanzo has both taught and published extensively in African American literature, theories of affect, popular culture, critical race theory, feminist theory and graphic storytelling, including a previous book, “The Suffering Will Not Be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling” (SUNY Press, 2009). Her interest in the deeper meaning of comics evolved from reading them in graduate school “just to have something to read quickly,” she recalled. At Ohio State, she discovered the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, and learned that “there are a lot of comic and cartoon scholars in English literature, and they are doing a lot of work on the topic.” Her first publication about comics was an essay entitled “Truth in Red, White, and Black” about the Black Captain America. She also has written for CNN about the infamous cartoon treatment of tennis superstar Serena Williams.
At OSU, Wanzo found archival material that included work by Sam Milai, a Black cartoonist for the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper who “thought that assimilation was the best path (for Black people) rather than radicalism,” she said. “Caricature” looks at how Black cartoonists such as Milai and others from various political perspectives have “used racialized caricatures to criticize constructions of ideal citizenship, as well as the alienation of African Americans from such imaginaries,” according to a description of her book.
Fan culture and race “used to be seen as a tiny niche” and the current world of fandom and fan culture “sees itself as progressive when there is still a lot of racist content,” Wanzo said. “We have to ask what will make a substantive change for the better.”
With her latest book now out in the world, Wanzo has three more “in my head.” She has been asked to write a short book about the “Black Panther” film and has begun work on a book about “civil rights temporalities – how we talk about progress – sometimes we think about justice, and feel that it should have arrived now,” she said. “There has been enough time to (resolve) issues such as abortion rights and (head off) events such as the January riot in the U.S. Capitol. The fictions about civil rights should have been understood by now.”
Also “near and dear to my heart,” Wanzo said, is producing a study guide for her book that can be used by public libraries, museums and other community outlets; in online research; and when she has speaking engagements.
Wanzo would like to see American readers and the community – even the nation as a whole – have a better understanding of the issues that she writes and teaches about because they “cover basically everything in the world.” To take insights like hers from the university to the community, she said, “the main thing to do is have an eye for reality in every context and commit ourselves to seeing what’s happening in churches, workplaces, schools.”
While Wanzo has lived in a lot of places for studies, fellowships and teaching, including California, New York, Ohio and more, “I could see myself staying in St. Louis,” she said. “I love the arts and culture, the live music, the museums that are free – you see more Black people at museums and galleries because of the accessibility than you might elsewhere – and that there is still some industry left here.”
To learn more about Rebecca Wanzo and her work, go to https://www.rebeccawanzo.com.
