Barbara Postema | University of Groningen (original) (raw)

Books by Barbara Postema

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In Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments, Barbara Postema uses the notion of t... more In Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments, Barbara Postema uses the notion of the gap to explain how comics create meaning. As texts that combine words and images, comics rely on the verbal register to communicate meaning, but they also use images in a number of different ways, many of which are based on leaving out information, forcing readers to fill in the blanks. By foregrounding the narrative qualities of comics, Postema demonstrates the ways in which comics are structured at every level of communication—image, panel, sequence, narration—to guide the reader to assemble the narrative from fragments. Besides advancing a new understanding of the structure of meaning in comics, this work’s exploration into the form of comics integrates two traditionally separate approaches to the study of comics, namely, the semiotics of the Franco-Belgian school of visual culture and comics studies, and the practice-based comics theory advanced by American cartoonists Will Eisner and Scott McCloud. It combines these traditions to advance a novel analytical framework and a vocabulary to study the form, an approach that is demonstrated through a series of readings of contemporary North-American comics.

Chapters by Barbara Postema

Transforming Anthony Trollope: Dispossession, Victorianism and 19th century Word and Image, 2015

Chapter in _Transforming Anthony Trollope: Dispossession, Victorianism and 19th century Word and ... more Chapter in _Transforming Anthony Trollope: Dispossession, Victorianism and 19th century Word and Image_. Edited by Laurence Grove and Simon Grennan, Leuven UP, 2015, pp. 131–47.

Abstraction and Comics / Bande dessinée et abstraction, 2019

This is a chapter in a large collection edited by Aarnoud Rommens, Benoit Crucifix, Björn-Olav Do... more This is a chapter in a large collection edited by Aarnoud Rommens, Benoit Crucifix, Björn-Olav Dozo, Erwin Dejasse, and Pablo Turnes.

The wordless graphic novel h day by Renée French tells a story, but what exactly happens in this story may not be entirely clear. Readers are in fact guided in how to make sense of the book by the text on the cover, which clarifies, "in h day (...) the artist illustrates her struggles with migraine headaches and argentine ant infestation." Without this textual key to interpreting the work, h day would be a challenge indeed, or would remain abstract to a much greater degree. When there is no (verbal) text to perform the common anchoring functions that readers are used to, even wordless comics that somehow signal a narrative intent can come across as vague or ambiguous. At the very least, wordless comics often face readers with nameless protagonists, deliberately or not denying readers that guidance. Some silent comics can seem completely abstract in a narrative sense, even when the images that compile them are representational, as in the case of h day.
Using theoretical approaches taken from Thierry Groensteen, Jan Baetens, and Andrei Molotiu, this chapter analyzes a number of comics, including the aforementioned h day, Fata Morgana by Jon Vermilyea, Silent Worlds by Carlos Santos, and Le fils du Roi by Éric Lambé. While providing readings of these works, the main focus is on tracing the kinds of abstractions that these texts attain, based on their pictorial styles, their use of formal comics elements, and on the degree of narrative they contain, or the lack thereof. Ultimately, the readings demonstrate that narrative in these works is abstracted into impressions of emotions and a sense of a developing situation. The development comes from the sequentiality of the images, since each individual image shows an abstract situation, independent of style. The abstraction of these works overall, and their concomitant difficulty for readers, is not solely determined by the relative abstraction of their art.

The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel, 2018

This volume is a cross-disciplinary collection of essays in the fields of nineteenth-century hist... more This volume is a cross-disciplinary collection of essays in the fields of nineteenth-century history, adaptation, word/image and Victorianism. Featuring new writing by some of the most influential, respected and radical scholars in these fields, Transforming Anthony Trollope constitutes both a close companion to Simon Grennan’s 2015 graphic novel Dispossession – an adaptation of Anthony Trollope’s 1879 novel John Caldigate – and a forward-looking, stand-alone addition to current debates on the cultural uses of history and the theorisation of remediation, illustration and narrative drawing.

Articles by Barbara Postema

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Vol. 11, Iss. 5-6, 2020

Introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics that I co-edited wi... more Introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics that I co-edited with Andrew Lesk

9ª Arte, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2019

Applies the terminology and methodologies laid out in Narrative Structure in Comics (2014, 2018) ... more Applies the terminology and methodologies laid out in Narrative Structure in Comics (2014, 2018) to the graphic novel The Arrival by Shaun Tan (2006), considered as a wordless comic.

RESUMO
Aplica a terminologia e as metodologias apresentadas no livro Estrutura narrativa nos quadrinhos (POSTEMA, 2018a) à graphic novel The arrival, de Shaun Tan (2006), considerada como um história em quadrinhos sem palavras. Defende que é difícil encontrar abstração e simplificação no estilo escolhido por Tan e que muito so sentido que suas imagens transmitem vem da estilo visual que ele utiliza, que faz lembrar de antigas fotografias. Devido à qualidade do instantâneo fotográfico das imagens de Tan, a maioria dos quadros, como fotografias, parecem representar justamente um instante, capturando somente o senso do tempo passando através de vários quadrinhos. The Arrival não emprega grades, uma vez que é disposto com generosos, claras sarjetas, obtendo um formato de quadrinhos adjacentes sem qualquer espaço entre eles e tampouco utiliza insertos, mas somente alguns insertos implícitos de molduras dentro de molduras. O artigo também utiliza duas histórias em quadrinhos de Fábio Moon para ilustrar o conceito de sequências.

9a Arte, 2018

Resumo: No processo de prover leituras detalhadas de uma variedade de quadrinhos silen... more Resumo: No processo de prover leituras detalhadas de uma variedade de quadrinhos silenciosos, este artigo considera a diferença entre imagens desenhadas e imagens fotográficas como veículos para a narrativa, traça uma variedade de formas pelas quais as fotos são remediatizadas nos quadrinhos e sugere varias funções narrativas pelas quais as fotografias são usadas em quadrinhos sem palavras como substitutos para o texto.

Palavras-chave: Roland Barthes; Walter Benjamin; Jess Fink; Matthew Forsythe; Megan Kelso; remediação; quadrinhos silenciosos; Shawn Tan; George A. Walker; quadrinhos sem palavras.

Abstract: In the process of providing close readings of a number of silent comics, this article considers the difference between drawn images and photographic images as vehicles for narrative, traces a number of the ways in which photos are remediated in comics, and suggests various narrative functions for which photographs in wordless comics are used as stand-ins for text.

Keywords: Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Jess Fink, Matthew Forsythe, Megan Kelso, remediation, silent comics, Shaun Tan, George A. Walker, wordless comics.

Image and Narrative 16.2 (2015). Special issue: The Narrative Functions of Photography in Comics. 84-95., Jul 2, 2015

In the process of providing close readings of a number of silent comics, this article considers t... more In the process of providing close readings of a number of silent comics, this article considers the difference between drawn images and photographic images as vehicles for narrative, traces a number of the ways in which photos are remediated in comics, and suggests various narrative functions for which photographs in wordless comics are used as stand-ins for text.

Résumé

Axé sur la lecture détaillée de plusieurs bandes dessinées muettes, cet article s’interroge sur la différence entre images dessinées et images photographiques en tant que support d’une narration. Il discute aussi certaines formes de remédiatisation de la photographie au sein de la bande dessinée. Enfin, il présente plusieurs fonctions narratives que la photographie peut assumer quand elle se substitue au texte dans une bande dessinée muette.

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 5.3 (2014): 311-322., Sep 2014

Comics publishers as well as children’s book publishers are turning out increasing numbers of com... more Comics publishers as well as children’s book publishers are turning out increasing numbers of comics created especially for children and young adults. Amongst these is a striking number of wordless comics. This article explores how wordless children’s comics relate to and differ from ‘conventional’ children’s picture books and comics more broadly; it discusses the reading strategies that these comics invite, including a focus on character building through body language and non-verbal communication. The comics form of these texts assumes a certain amount of literacy on the part of its readers, and consequently teaches literacy habits even in a wordless context. This article also notes that academic writing on children’s picturebooks tends not to engage with comics, but that, when they do discuss comics, these are frequently silent comics. Silent picturebooks and comics can be very far apart, stylistically, but in sharing storytelling and representational techniques they inspire one another to tell new stories.

This article is based on the lecture I presented at the International Comic Art Forum in 2006, as... more This article is based on the lecture I presented at the International Comic Art Forum in 2006, as winner of that year's John A. Lent Scholarship. The lecture was the beginning of a chapter in my dissertation, "Mind the Gap: Absence as Signifying Function in Comics," and was eventually revised into a chapter in my monograph, _Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments_.
Drawing on a number of theories of visual signification, this article discussed how images in comics convey meaning. The article addresses the semiotics of the comics image, iconography, and visual intertextuality, as well as discussing how individual, still images in comics suggest time and the passing of time in a number of ways, setting up the conditions for readers to "move" the images, incrementally adding to the understanding of the sequence and ongoing narrative with each individual panel.

Reviews by Barbara Postema

American Literary History Online Reviews, 2019

Online Articles and Posts by Barbara Postema

The Comics Journal, 2019

Seven comics scholars and Seth experts—Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, Martha Kuhlman, Daniel Marron... more Seven comics scholars and Seth experts—Charles Hatfield, Jeet Heer, Martha Kuhlman, Daniel Marrone, Barbara Postema, Candida Rifkind, and Tom Smart—discuss in depth Seth's twenty-years-in-the-making signature work.

The Middle Spaces, 2019

This post is part of the first installment of the Round Table "Seeing Sounds / Hearing Pictures –... more This post is part of the first installment of the Round Table "Seeing Sounds / Hearing Pictures – A Round Table on Sound & Comics," organized by The Middle Spaces and edited by Osvaldo Oyola and Joshua Kopin.

Transforming Anthony Trollope: Dispossession, Victorianism and 19th century Word and Image, 2015

Abstraction and Comics / Bande dessinée et abstraction, 2019

The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel, 2018

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Vol. 11, Iss. 5-6, 2020

9ª Arte, Vol. 8, No. 2, 2019

9a Arte, 2018

Palavras-chave: Roland Barthes; Walter Benjamin; Jess Fink; Matthew Forsythe; Megan Kelso; remediação; quadrinhos silenciosos; Shawn Tan; George A. Walker; quadrinhos sem palavras.

Keywords: Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Jess Fink, Matthew Forsythe, Megan Kelso, remediation, silent comics, Shaun Tan, George A. Walker, wordless comics.

Image and Narrative 16.2 (2015). Special issue: The Narrative Functions of Photography in Comics. 84-95., Jul 2, 2015

Résumé

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 5.3 (2014): 311-322., Sep 2014

American Literary History Online Reviews, 2019

The Comics Journal, 2019

The Middle Spaces, 2019

Comics Forum, Jan 24, 2014

One thing that is essential for Comics Theory is discussion and exchange: scholars need to engage... more One thing that is essential for Comics Theory is discussion and exchange: scholars need to engage one another's work, especially in their theoretical thinking and writing. We have the luxury of often writing on primary texts, on comics, that have been discussed very little in previous scholarship, if at all. So there is not much secondary literature to cite or engage with on that front. Yet in writing about one particular comic we often have a lot to say more broadly, about the form of comics, or the genres and publication practices. These matters are often relevant to the comic we're discussing, and these things have been discussed in theoretical writings. It is therefore up to a researcher to do their due diligence and engage with that broader literature, and this is something to model in our teaching as well, to set the example.

In the last five to ten years, comics publishers as well as more traditional children’s book publ... more In the last five to ten years, comics publishers as well as more traditional children’s book publishers have turned out increasing numbers of comics created especially for children and young adults. One striking development in this shift is the turn to wordless comics for children, especially due to the ways in which these texts differ from more traditional wordless children’s books. Examples of such works are the Polo books by Régis Faller, Sara Varon’s Robot Dreams and Chicken and Cat, Korgi by Christian Slade, Andy Runton’s Owly series, and The Arrival by Shaun Tan. This paper looks at these wordless children’s comics as a subgenre, exploring how they relate to and differ from “conventional” children’s picture books and wordless comics more broadly; I discuss the reading strategies that these comics invite and consider the question why this genre is so popular right now.

Traditionally, wordless children’s books have been created mostly for very young children, children who have not yet reached an age where they are expected to be able read. The recent harvest of wordless comics is generally aimed at an older audience, judging from these works’ narratives and themes. I propose that the comics form of these texts assumes a certain amount of literacy on the part of its readers, as I will explain by using sample passages from these comics, and discussing the types of signification and comprehension that they require, for example in deciphering the image and in making sense of series of pictures.

This dissertation argues that the gap, which according to Wolfgang Iser’s narrative theory is a c... more This dissertation argues that the gap, which according to Wolfgang Iser’s narrative theory is a characteristic of all fictional narrative, in comics works at all levels of signification. Gaps or absences signify in the drawn image, the page layout, the sequence, and image-text combinations, as well as in the narrative.
Comics images rely on minimizing and absence of information, rather than representation in detail. First I establish the notion of the gap as an inherent part of the abstraction that is typical of the comics image. Then I trace other gaps in comics. The page layout is created by frames and gutters which separate out the individual panels, creating structure and order. The gaps between panels are ultimately the condition for creating sequence and continuity from a series of separate panels. In relation to the layout, gutters are literal gaps, empty spaces on the page, while in relation to the sequence, gutters are gaps in time, gaps in sequences of events that call for interpretation of action rather than of structure.
Another means besides the sequence through which comics offer to close gaps is provided by the insertion of text, the verbal code which as a separate register introduces another way in which to interpret and connect the images in the comics sequence. Text can be an alternate way of bridging gaps between panels. The concept of gaps is familiar from a narratological point of view, as inherent to and productive of narrative. It provides yet another way in comics in which the reader is invited and engaged as a participant. Through the narrative gap, and the recognition of the gap operative at all levels of their signification, comics create a self-awareness of these absences, often by creating narratives in which the gap itself takes on a thematic role, not just a signifying function.
In my interrogation of the function of the gap as creative presence/absence in comics, I take a central characteristic of comics as my theoretical foundation: the form involves a different kind, and in fact many different kinds, of reading, only one of which is the reading of words. The other forms of reading that comics require deal largely with the image. Due to the role of the image in comics, it is sometimes assumed that reading comics comes naturally, that the meaning of these texts is transparent because they are visual. The idea is that it is not necessary to learn this kind of reading, let alone that such texts might require explanation. However, in this age of visual literacy, that view has been superseded. We have learned that images and their power should not be taken for granted, and that images can carry a host of messages.
The process of reading in comics is not natural, is not inherent, and my dissertation sets out to lay bare that process, break down the numerous functions that are actually involved in reading comics. One problem with discussing these levels is that they are all intertwined: when a person reads a comics, the signifying functions of the drawings, the sequence and the story all work at the same time. The gap offers a way of breaking apart the levels of signification. It offers a way into these processes, since the gap operates slightly differently at each level—image, layout, sequence, text-image relations, and narrative.
The area of study to which my work contributes is not a brand new field, but it is certainly still developing. The man who is sometimes hailed as the inventor, the father of comics, Swiss Rodolphe Töpffer, also wrote the first theory of comics, in his Essay on Physiognomy (Essai de Physiognomonie) from 1845. The field has expanded from there, with histories of comics written since the 1940s, and dissertations and sociological studies of comics following shortly after. In terms of the popularization and visibility of comics studies (certainly in North America) two texts have been of great significance: Will Eisner’s Comics and Sequential Art (1985), and Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (1994). These texts share with Töpffer’s ur-comics study that they are written from the point of view of the writer. While these works analyze the form of comics to some extent, they are mostly invested in a how-to approach, explaining how comics artists can craft their stories, can achieve certain effects.
My own study of comics signification comes at the form from the other side. My analysis is based in the experience of the reader. When a person is faced with a comics text, how does he or she make sense of it? European comics criticism has a longer tradition of comics studies from a readerly point of view, and most often rooted in a semiotic approach, as my dissertation is. Examples of this school are Strips Anders Lezen or Pour une lecture moderne de la bande dessinée by Pascal Lefèvre and Jan Baetens (1993), and Thierry Groensteen’s Système de la bande dessinée (1999). This last work was translated into English in 2007, and marks an important development in American comics criticism: the introduction of the European school of formal analysis of comics. Groensteen’s work has been of some influence on my own. My work is in dialogue with Groensteen’s, building on some of his ideas but creating a vocabulary in English. Also, the francophone tradition of comics studies, not surprisingly, draws on the Francobelgian tradition of Bande Dessinée. This is a tradition of comics that North American readers tend not to be very familiar with, and one that operates quite differently from American comics. Thus, besides furthering the understanding of signification in comics, my work also offers an entry into francophone work on comics by applying theoretical concepts like braiding (tressage) and the multiframe, but applying them in American comics.
At the center of my semiotics of comics is the gap, the notion of creating meaning out of absences. While the gap functions and is coded in different ways for each layer of signification in comics, its presence in all these levels creates the coherence in my understanding of the form. The most familiar conception of the gap in relation to narratology is Wolfgang Iser’s application of the gap or blank as a productive force in narrative, drawing the reader into the process. Comics, like any narrative medium, display this function of the gap. The text that produces the narrative gaps is itself riddled with other gaps and absences as well. Comics narrate in sequences of images, which rely on gaps to create continuity. Actions and movements have to be shown in fragments, in separate images, in order to evoke the complete action. Comics create wholes from holes.
The sequential production of narration, of action, in comics is the result of the layout, which is a feature that is very specific to the comics form. The layout makes the gap literally visible on the page, in the form of the empty gutters between panels. The blanks signal that the sequences of panels signify in relation to one another. The gutter invites an involvement from the reader, who is called upon to produce a continuity, a coherence from the discontinuous fragments shown on the page.
While there are absences between the panels in comics, absences also exist within the panels. Imagery in comics signifies through simplification and abstraction. Its reduction of detail is related to caricature, but the aim of caricature is to foreground and ridicule certain actual qualities of its real-life subjects, which is not generally the case with comics drawings. The cartoon style of drawing in comics contains gaps in its lack of detail. The images make up for a lack of information through the use of strong outlines. In what Rudolf Arnheim calls the “completion effect,” the reader is again called upon to fill in the absent information. One aspect of the gap in comics is representational economy. At all levels of comics signification the discourse displays an economy of detail. From the point of view of the writer/artist in comics the question always seems to be: how little can I show, how much can I leave out, and still produce a viable narrative. I use Charles Schulz’ Peanuts throughout to illustrate this economy of image, of sequence, even of narration.
The gaps and openings that are left on the comics page create space for the production of meaning. Signification is a dynamic process in comics, one that requires reading multiple layers of meaning at the same time. Although all these layers of signification involve a similar process, namely finding and filling in absences, these gaps are created using different codes and signs at each level of signification (drawings, layout, sequence, narrative), and consequently they require different forms of decoding at each level. One might think that all these different layers would become incomprehensible, that the variety of different codes used, and the complexity of signifying systems would be overwhelming. Comics, however, communicate instructions for how to read them along with their narrative, through their very use of codes. In my dissertation I have brought those latent codes to the forefront and show how they work in a number of different texts. This analysis denaturalizes the various kinds of reading that comics require, and shows the sophisticated processes of signification at work.
Comics supply readers with the keys to their decoding. Through conventions, in their application of self-referentiality, and often by reference to other media, comics provide both the text and the manual for how to read that text. This is once again a way in which comics very directly involve and address their readers. What needs to be inserted into the gap that is left in comics, is, ultimately, the reader.

Studies in comics, Jul 1, 2023

Critical Humanities, Jan 20, 2024

Critical Humanities, Dec 25, 2023

Routledge eBooks, Jul 19, 2023

The Secret Origins of Comics Studies, Sep 19, 2017

Leuven University Press, 2015

Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2016

The Cambridge History of the Graphic Novel, 2018

Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2014

9ª Arte (São Paulo), 2018

No processo de prover leituras detalhadas de uma variedade de quadrinhos silenciosos, este artigo... more No processo de prover leituras detalhadas de uma variedade de quadrinhos silenciosos, este artigo considera a diferença entre imagens desenhadas e imagens fotográficas como veículos para a narrativa, traça uma variedade de formas pelas quais as fotos são remediatizadas nos quadrinhos e sugere varias funções narrativas pelas quais as fotografias são usadas em quadrinhos sem palavras como substitutos para o texto.

In Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments, Barbara Postema seeks to explain how... more In Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments, Barbara Postema seeks to explain how comics communicate and create meaning, with an emphasis on two aspects of comics. She first examines the pictorial quality of comics, which receives more emphasis than verbal/textual elements. Her second focus is upon the storytelling and narrative qualities of comics, as well as the literary explorations they provide. The "narrative structure" refers to the potential of images, the story telling capacities of panels, and the sequence of panels, in addition to the more traditional narratological concepts. Overall, the author presents a credible rationale for the way in which comics structure their narratives. At every level of communication, comics rely on gaps or absences to create meaning and guide the reader to a meaningful experience. RIT Press is pleased to announce Narrative Structure in Comics as the first book published in its Comics Monograph Series. BARBARA POSTEMA i...