After a screening of my doc. Latinx Superheroes in Mainstream Comics at the Durham County Library, a librarian asked: “What comics do a good job representing diversity, especially for young readers?” My reflex answer: “Go to the independents! Begin with those Latinx and African American creators featured in the documentary. Then follow the yellow-bricks [...]
In Jan Baetens’ creative work as a poet, novelist, and scholar, we see an ongoing interest in image-text forms and content. This takes shape in his scholarly focus that has systematically analyzed all variety of image-text narrative form, especially those that move across genre and form like and that have traditionally been relegated to [...]
“Graphic Reclamations: Barajas and Gonzo’s Tata Rambo as Co-Creative Journey that Sets the Historical Record Straight” Guest Post By: Frederick Luis Aldama, aka Professor LatinX Just the other day my kid asked: “how can the filmmaker of Hidden Figures have known the story of these three important African American women mathematicians and scientists if [...]
Jan Baetens has added more furniture to his wonderfully enchanting Imaginarium—an edifice built of on profound knowledge of the visual and verbal narrative arts as well as in the making of such narrative arts. His recent delectable addition: a history and compelling analysis of the fotoromanzo, roman-photo, récit en photos or photo-roman, soap [...]
Ohio State Professor Frederick Luis Aldama is enriching views of arts and culture one incredible lecture at a time. Ohio State faculty member Frederick Luis Aldama talks to his students about the need for more diversity in comics. Frederick Luis Aldama has been teaching undergraduates since his arrival at Ohio State in 2005. He [...]
Comics and Columbus: In the Heart of the Heart of the Heartland By Avery Samuels Ohio—from its icy lakeshores in the North to its rolling viridian hills in the South—is an undeniably liminal space. The state spent much of its youth as the edge of the western frontier, then evolved into a political swing-state. [...]
Frederick Aldama is an Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor at Ohio State University where he is the founder and director of LASER, the Latino and Latin American Space for Enrichment Research, and the founder and co-director of Humanities and Cognitive Sciences High School Summer Institute at The Ohio State University. Since receiving his doctorate [...]
The other day I arrived home to find waiting in the mailbox a weighty, Voces Sin Fronteras: Our Stories Our Truth. It proved not only weighty to the hand, but once I began peeling its pages back, weighty to the soul. The 16 bilingual (side-by-side English then Spanish) comic book autobiographical vignettes that fill [...]
Mashbone & Grifty: by Oscar Garza (Art/Story) and Rolando Esquivel (story) Out of the gate here, let me just say there’s a lot of venom spitting at our Latinx peoples. So much and for so long I nearly forgot what it’s like to laugh—bellyache laugh. Garza and Esquivel’s Mashbone & Grifty lifted [...]
Known for his scholarship on Latinx popular culture and comics, Frederick Luis Aldama just expanded his repertoire with another book—this one on Latinx children’s picture books and Young Adult literature, inspired by the books he began reading to his daughter, Corina. Published by the University of Pittsburgh Press and released earlier this year, Latino/a [...]