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Gender-Blind and Gender-Bound: Young Adult Comics and the Postfeminist Protagonist

Brodbeck, Seth
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1369055837

Abstract Details

2013, Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, Popular Culture.
Since 2005, publishers of children's literature have begun to release a large number of graphic novels aimed at young readers. Many of these comics take place within the fantasy genre and feature female protagonists; a surprising trend given the normal assumption that boys do not want to read stories about girls, and the usual publishing strategy of courting male readers specifically. This project examines five such fantasy comics, Kazu Kibushi's Amulet, Ben Hatke's Zita the Spacegirl, Barry Deutsch's Hereville, Jane Yolen and Mike Cavallaro's Foiled, and Ursula Vernon's Digger, which feature young heroines in their leading roles. Drawing on the scholarship of postfeminism (Gill, McRobbie, Tasker and Negra) and Perry Nodelman's work on children's literature, I use textual analysis to reveal a set of problematic implications in the comics. Despite the positive framing of the protagonists as active participants in their narratives, these comics end up falling into familiar stereotypes and problems. Taken as a whole, they all promote a particular brand of tomboyish femininity in their protagonists, which becomes the de facto model of femininity to the reader given the general lack of other significant female characters. They furthermore have a tendency to avoid raising issues of gender, an elision which nevertheless coexists with casts of characters which are majority male, as well as settings which tend to distribute roles along traditional gender lines. The end result is a naturalization and personalization of structural inequalities in society. There is considerable potential in this combination of comics and children's literature, both for the fostering of literacy among young readers, and for promoting cross-gender identification. From a feminist standpoint, however, that potential is squandered through an unwillingness to go further. Nevertheless, this is just one small section of a larger publishing trend which bears further investigation.
Becca Cragin (Committee Chair)
Jeffrey Brown (Committee Member)
Esther Clinton (Committee Member)
58 p.
Gender; Gender Studies
comics; graphic novels; childrens literature; young adult; feminism; postfeminism; Amulet; Zita the Spacegirl; Hereville; Foiled; Digger; fantasy; heroines

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Brodbeck, S. (2013). Gender-Blind and Gender-Bound: Young Adult Comics and the Postfeminist Protagonist [Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1369055837

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Brodbeck, Seth. Gender-Blind and Gender-Bound: Young Adult Comics and the Postfeminist Protagonist. 2013. Bowling Green State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1369055837.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Brodbeck, Seth. "Gender-Blind and Gender-Bound: Young Adult Comics and the Postfeminist Protagonist." Master's thesis, Bowling Green State University, 2013. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=bgsu1369055837

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

bgsu1369055837
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© 2013, some rights reserved.Creative Commons License Gender-Blind and Gender-Bound: Young Adult Comics and the Postfeminist Protagonist by Seth Brodbeck is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. Based on a work at etd.ohiolink.edu.
This open access ETD is published by Bowling Green State University and OhioLINK.