Comics and the Senses

Comics and the Senses
Author: Ian Hague
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2014-01-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 113468455X

Attempts to define what comics are and explain how they work have not always been successful because they are premised upon the idea that comic strips, comic books and graphic novels are inherently and almost exclusively visual. This book challenges that premise, and asserts that comics is not just a visual medium. The book outlines the multisensory aspects of comics: the visual, audible, tactile, olfactory and gustatory elements of the medium. It rejects a synaesthetic approach (by which all the senses are engaged through visual stimuli) and instead argues for a truly multisensory model by which the direct stimulation of the reader’s physical senses can be understood. A wide range of examples demonstrates how multisensory communication systems work in both commercial and more experimental contexts. The book concludes with a case study that looks at the works of Alan Moore and indicates areas of interest that multisensory analysis can draw out, but which are overlooked by more conventional approaches.

Super Senses

Super Senses
Author: Paige V. Polinsky
Publisher: Bellwether Media
Total Pages: 32
Release: 2020-08-01
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1681037246

Although he cannot see, Daredevil uses his super senses of smell, touch, taste, and sound to save the day! Humans don’t quite have the super senses of Daredevil. But in this title, readers will explore how people and animals use their senses in super ways! Informative text highlights the superpower in fiction, the science behind the power, and the power’s future possibilities. Special features reinforce the text by profiling a popular superhero, highlighting the superpower in the media, showing off its use in nature, and more!

Reading the Funnies

Reading the Funnies
Author: Donald Phelps
Publisher: Fantagraphics Books
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2001-05-01
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1560973684

The comic strip has been a staple of American newspapers for nearly a century. It is a creation unique to cultural life and, in addition to entertainment, has commented on the way we see and view ourselves. From its high culture influence on Pop Art to its low culture appeal to children of all ages, the comic strip has had a lasting hold on the imaginations of generations. Noted writer Donald Phelps provides essays on popular classics, such as Chester Gould's Dick Tracy, E.C. Segar's Thimble Theatre (which produced Popeye), and Frank King's Gasoline Alley. His keen eye discerns the sublime qualities of this most American art form with wit and refreshing candor. Reading the Funnies offers an elegant and eloquent look into this fascinating slice of American popular culture.

Science Comics: The Brain

Science Comics: The Brain
Author: Tory Woollcott
Publisher: First Second
Total Pages: 67
Release: 2018-10-16
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1250229375

With Science Comics, you can explore the depths of the ocean, the farthest reaches of space, and everything in between! These gorgeously illustrated graphic novels offer wildly entertaining views of their subjects. In this volume, Fahama has been kidnapped by a mad scientist and his zombie assistant, and they are intent on stealing her brain! She'll need to learn about the brain as fast as possible in order to plan her escape! How did the brain evolve? How do our senses work in relation to the brain? How do we remember things? What makes you, YOU? Get an inside look at the human brain, the most advanced operating system in the world . . . if you have the nerve!

The Senses of Humor

The Senses of Humor
Author: Daniel Wickberg
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2015-06-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 0801454379

Why do modern Americans believe in something called a sense of humor and how did they come to that belief? Daniel Wickberg traces the cultural history of the concept from its British origins as a way to explore new conceptions of the self and social order in modern America. More than simply the history of an idea, Wickberg's study provides new insights into a peculiarly modern cultural sensibility.The expression "sense of humor" was first coined in the 1840s and the idea that such a sense was a personality trait to be valued developed only in the 1870s. What is the relationship between Medieval humoral medicine and this distinctively modern idea of the sense of humor? What has it meant in the past 125 years to declare that someone lacks a sense of humor? How is the joke, as a twentieth-century quasi-literary form, different from the traditional folktale? Wickberg addresses these questions, among others, using the history of ideas to throw new light on the way contemporary Americans think and speak.The context of Wickberg's analysis is Anglo-American; the specifically British meanings of humor and laughter from the sixteenth century forward provide the framework for understanding American cultural values in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The genealogy of the sense of humor is, like the study of keywords, an avenue into a significant aspect of the cultural history of modernity. Drawing on a wide range of sources and disciplinary perspectives, Wickberg's analysis challenges many of the prevailing views of modern American culture and suggests a new model for cultural historians.

Key Terms in Comics Studies

Key Terms in Comics Studies
Author: Erin La Cour
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 391
Release: 2022-01-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 3030749746

Key Terms in Comics Studies is a glossary of over 300 terms and critical concepts currently used in the Anglophone academic study of comics, including those from other languages that are currently adopted and used in English. Written by nearly 100 international and contemporary experts from the field, the entries are succinctly defined, exemplified, and referenced. The entries are 250 words or fewer, placed in alphabetical order, and explicitly cross-referenced to others in the book. Key Terms in Comics Studies is an invaluable tool for both students and established researchers alike.

An Immense World

An Immense World
Author: Ed Yong
Publisher: Random House
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2022-06-21
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 0593133242

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “thrilling” (The New York Times), “dazzling” (The Wall Street Journal) tour of the radically different ways that animals perceive the world that will fill you with wonder and forever alter your perspective, by Pulitzer Prize–winning science journalist Ed Yong “One of this year’s finest works of narrative nonfiction.”—Oprah Daily ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Time, People, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Slate, Reader’s Digest, Chicago Public Library, Outside, Publishers Weekly, BookPage ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: Oprah Daily, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Economist, Smithsonian Magazine, Prospect (UK), Globe & Mail, Esquire, Mental Floss, Marginalian, She Reads, Kirkus Reviews, Library Journal The Earth teems with sights and textures, sounds and vibrations, smells and tastes, electric and magnetic fields. But every kind of animal, including humans, is enclosed within its own unique sensory bubble, perceiving but a tiny sliver of our immense world. In An Immense World, Ed Yong coaxes us beyond the confines of our own senses, allowing us to perceive the skeins of scent, waves of electromagnetism, and pulses of pressure that surround us. We encounter beetles that are drawn to fires, turtles that can track the Earth’s magnetic fields, fish that fill rivers with electrical messages, and even humans who wield sonar like bats. We discover that a crocodile’s scaly face is as sensitive as a lover’s fingertips, that the eyes of a giant squid evolved to see sparkling whales, that plants thrum with the inaudible songs of courting bugs, and that even simple scallops have complex vision. We learn what bees see in flowers, what songbirds hear in their tunes, and what dogs smell on the street. We listen to stories of pivotal discoveries in the field, while looking ahead at the many mysteries that remain unsolved. Funny, rigorous, and suffused with the joy of discovery, An Immense World takes us on what Marcel Proust called “the only true voyage . . . not to visit strange lands, but to possess other eyes.” WINNER OF THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL • FINALIST FOR THE KIRKUS PRIZE • FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD • LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/E.O. WILSON AWARD

The Empire of the Senses

The Empire of the Senses
Author: Alexis Landau
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 498
Release: 2016-02-09
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 080417346X

A San Francisco Chronicle Best Book of the Year The Empire of the Senses is an enthralling tale of love and war, duty and self-discovery. It begins in 1914 when Lev Perlmutter, an assimilated German Jew fighting in World War I, finds unexpected companionship on the Eastern Front; back at home, his wife Josephine embarks on a clandestine affair of her own. A decade later, during the heady, politically charged interwar years in Berlin, their children—one, a nascent Fascist struggling with his sexuality, the other a young woman entranced by the glitz and glamour of the Jazz Age—experience their own romantic awakenings. With a painter’s sensibility for the layered images that comprise our lives, this exquisite novel by Alexis Landau marks the emergence of a writer uniquely talented in bringing the past to the present.

From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels

From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels
Author: Daniel Stein
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
Total Pages: 543
Release: 2015-04-24
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3110427729

This essay collection examines the theory and history of graphic narrative as one of the most interesting and versatile forms of storytelling in contemporary media culture. Its contributions test the applicability of narratological concepts to graphic narrative, examine aspects of graphic narrative beyond the ‘single work’, consider the development of particular narrative strategies within individual genres, and trace the forms and functions of graphic narrative across cultures. Analyzing a wide range of texts, genres, and narrative strategies from both theoretical and historical perspectives, the international group of scholars gathered here offers state-of-the-art research on graphic narrative in the context of an increasingly postclassical and transmedial narratology. This is the revised second edition of From Comic Strips to Graphic Novels, which was originally published in the Narratologia series.

Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America

Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America
Author: Edward King
Publisher: UCL Press
Total Pages: 266
Release: 2017-07-03
Genre: Literary Collections
ISBN: 191157650X

Latin America is experiencing a boom in graphic novels that are highly innovative in their conceptual play and their reworking of the medium. Inventive artwork and sophisticated scripts have combined to satisfy the demand of a growing readership, both at home and abroad. Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America, which is the first book-length study of the topic, argues that the graphic novel is emerging in Latin America as a uniquely powerful force to explore the nature of twenty-first century subjectivity. The authors place particular emphasis on the ways in which humans are bound to their non-human environment, and these ideas are productively drawn out in relation to posthuman thought and experience. The book draws together a range of recent graphic novels from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico and Uruguay, many of which experiment with questions of transmediality, the representation of urban space, modes of perception and cognition, and a new form of ethics for a posthuman world. Praise for Posthumanism and the Graphic Novel in Latin America '...well-referenced and… well considered - the analyses it brings are overall well-executed and insightful...' Image and Narrative, Jan 2018, vol 18, no 4