Contemporary culture is awash with stuff. Contemporary graphic novels give vivid expression to a culture preoccupied with the processes of circulation and appraisal, accumulation, and possession. By design, comics encourage the reader to scan the landscape, to pay attention to the physical objects that fill our lives and constitute our familiar surroundings. Because comics take place in a completely fabricated world, everything is there intentionally. Comics are stuff; comics tell stories about stuff; and they display stuff. ”Stuff” refers not only to physical objects, but also to the emotions, sentimental attachments, and nostalgic longings that we express ― or hold at bay ― through our relationships with stuff.

Join Provost’s Professor of Communication, Journalism, Cinematic Arts, and Education Henry Jenkins, and a range of guest speakers for a discussion of chapter one of his new book, Comics and Stuff, and, more broadly, of comics, comic studies, and living with stuff. Those attending will get the most out of the experience if they have read the relevant passage from the book, but are still welcome if they are encountering these ideas for the first time.

This session will cover how the features of comics as a medium create particular relationships to the objects that are being depicted; what comics scholars can learn from earlier moments of art history about the relationship between material culture and visual representation; how new configurations of knowledge and expertise are forming online as collectors come together to discuss meaningful “stuff.”

Henry will be joined by media scholar Drew Morton (Moderator), Art Historian Lisa Pons, Comics creator and theorist Nick Sousanis, and print scholar Will Straw for what promises to be a rich discussion of comics, the representation of everyday life, and our collective obsession with the material world.