Description
Book SynopsisDevelops a critical reading of comic religious narratives to engage moral sources that both expand and limit our ethical worlds.
Trade Review“This project takes a compelling place within the hermeneutics of religion and literature as a way of studying religion. Most impressive is Koltun-Fromm's subtle interpretation of the material, showing that it sustains very careful analysis, proving itself worthy of close reading and moral probing. Drawing on Religion models a productive integration of textual and visual materials and does so with clear prose and no jargon or excessive theorizing.”
—David Morgan,author of Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment
“Drawing on Religion is a significant contribution to the comics studies subfield of graphic religion. Koltun-Fromm’s work is keenly original in both its thesis approach and its methodology, as well as its skill. In addition to this being a novel and actionable approach to the comics content, Koltun-Fromm also makes it sharply readable and engaging.”
—A. David Lewis,author of American Comics, Literary Theory, and Religion: The Superhero Afterlife
“Drawing on Religion is an excellent and engaging read. Koltun-Fromm (social responsibility and religion, Haverford College) looks at the complex ethical issues surrounding the graphic representation of religious and moral stories. Accessible and easy to read, Drawing on Religion leads one to imagine what it means to visualize and draw moral and sacred worlds, particularly in comics, which often rely on stereotypes to push narratives.”
—A. Sheppard Choice
“Deftly contends with the adage that ‘representation matters’ and with the specific representations of religious life that comics offer.”
—Toby Braden Johnson Journal of the American Academy of Religion
“Koltun-Fromm has offered readers a nuanced perspective on comics that may appear unproblematic in their representation of and relationship with religion, but in fact are anything but. Such comics enable the reader to move to intellectual, moral and ethical places they would not have otherwise encountered.”
—Rae Hancock Studies in Comics
“Far beyond a naïve listing of places where religion appears in comics, Koltun-Fromm has selected a few moments in the history of comics to linger over and interpret in a deliberative way . . . that is conscious of the ambiguities of the medium.”
—Zachariah Motts Reading Religion
Table of ContentsFigures List
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Ethics of Representation
Chapter One: Stereotypes and the Moral Challenges of Aesthetic Narration
Chapter Two: The Ethics of Scriptural Play: Race, Gender, and Moral Sources
Chapter Three: Imagining (Superhero) Identity
Chapter Four: The Nativist Imagination in Religious Comic Stories
Chapter Five: Graphic Violence and the Religious Self
Conclusion: The Ethics of Lingering
Notes
Bibliography
Index
