Through a celebration and critique of the comics character of Wonder Woman, this collection takes up the historical trends that have changed the world of comics, American popular culture, and feminism.
In honor of the 75th anniversary of the comic book super heroine Wonder Woman in 2016, Kent State University and the Cleveland Public Library partnered to celebrate the intersections of public literacy, comics, and feminism in a jointly sponsored symposium. Centering on the figure of Wonder Woman, the special issue of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics that this volume is based on collected the presentations and interviews from the event. This book will fortuitously appear in honor of Wonder Woman’s 80th anniversary and pays respect to "herstory" while recognizing her perpetual relevance to our present day, and beyond.
Like its progenitor, it reflects the historical trends that have changed the world of comics, American popular culture, and feminism so relevant to our current moment. It also highlights an interview with Mariko Tamaki, the current writer of Wonder Woman comics, as well as new editorial reflections in a Foreword and an Afterword.
Foreword
David Huxley and Joan Ormrod
Introduction – Wonder Woman and the public humanities: a reflection on the 2016 Wonder Woman Symposium
Vera J. Camden and Valentino L. Zullo
Part I: On Wonder Woman
1. Wonder Woman, feminist Icon? Queer icon? No, love icon
Phil Jimenez
2. Wonder Woman 1987– 1990: the Goddess, the Iron Maiden and the sacralisation of consumerism
Joan Ormrod
3. By Sappho’s Stylus! Reading Wonder Woman with Wertham
Carol Tilley
4. Wonder Woman: superheroine, not superhero
Peter Coogan
Part II: Wonder Woman’s Contemporaries
5. Babes in arms
Trina Robbins
6. Empire of a wicked woman: Catwoman, royalty, and the making of a comics icon
Genevieve Valentine
Part III: Interviews
7. Truth, justice, and the Amazonian way: an interview with Greg Rucka
Interviewers: Vera J. Camden and Valentino L. Zullo
8. Plain Dealing Women: Lois Lane and the Origin of the Comic Book Heroine– A Conversation with Laura Siegel Larson
Interviewer: Samantha Baskind
9. Wonder Woman symposium audience Q & A with Christie Marston
Christie Marston
Afterword: tales of wonder in dark times
Vera J. Camden and Valentino L. Zullo
Biography
Vera J. Camden is Professor of English at Kent State University, USA, Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University, USA, and Training and Supervising Analyst at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center, USA. She is Editor most recently of the forthcoming Cambridge Companion to Literature and Psychoanalysis. Co-editor of American Imago and American editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, she specializes in seventeenth-century British literature, psychoanalysis, and comics.
Valentino L. Zullo holds a PhD in English from Kent State University, USA. He is the Ohio Center for the Book Scholar-in-Residence at Cleveland Public Library where he co-leads the Get Graphic program and American editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. He is also licensed social worker practicing as a maternal depression therapist at OhioGuidestone and a candidate for psychoanalytic training at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center.
