Girls, gender and identity in comicsSugar, Spice, and the Not So Nice offers an innovative, wide-ranging and geographically diverse book-length treatment of girlhood in comics. The various ...contributing authors and artists provide novel insights into established themes within comics studies, children’s comics, graphic medicine and comics by and about refugees and marginalised ethnic or cultural groups. The book enriches traditional historical, narratological and aesthetic approaches to studying girlhood in comics with practice-based research, discussion and conversation. This re-examination of girls, gender and identity in comics connects with contemporary discourse on gender identity politics. Through examples from both within Europe, the anglophone world and beyond, and including visual essays alongside critical theory, the volume furthermore engages with new developments in contemporary comics scholarship. It will therefore appeal to students and scholars of childhood studies, comics scholars and creators, and those interested in addressing gender identity through the prism of comics. Contributors: Mel Gibson (Northumbria University), Martha Newbigging (Seneca College), María Porras Sánchez (Complutense University of Madrid), JoAnn Purcell (York University and Seneca College), Benoît Glaude (Ghent University/University of Louvain), Sylvain Lesage (University of Lille), Joan Ormrod (Manchester Metropolitan University), Aswathy Senan (The Research Collective Delhi), Michel De Dobbeleer (Ghent University), Sébastien Conard (KASK Ghent School of Arts and LUCA Brussels), Marthine Bertiot (University of Edinburgh), Julia Round (Bournemouth University) Ebook available in Open Access. This publication is GPRC-labeled (Guaranteed Peer-Reviewed Content).
Intentional or unintentional littering, especially among young people, poses a threat to the marine environment. It is, therefore, necessary to enhance awareness of marine environmental protection ...among youth groups. This study explored the interaction between visual image types (photograph vs. cartoon), message framing (positive vs. negative), and psychological distance (human vs. turtle). A three-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analysis were used to verify the hypotheses. The key findings of the research were as follows: (1) Among the eight information construction methods, cartoons combined with turtles and presented with positive outcomes were the best way to communicate, i.e., cartoons showing animals in a friendly and positive way were the most effective form of marine garbage recycling for young people, and (2) Young people's preference for information will promote their self-efficacy in marine garbage recycling. The implications of these findings for developing marine protection information communication education for youth groups are also proposed.
Using a novel characterization of texture, we propose an image decomposition technique that can effectively decomposes an image into its cartoon and texture components. The characterization rests on ...our observation that the texture component enjoys a blockwise low-rank nature with possible overlap and shear, because texture, in general, is globally dissimilar but locally well patterned. More specifically, one can observe that any local block of the texture component consists of only a few individual patterns. Based on this premise, we first introduce a new convex prior, named the block nuclear norm (BNN), leading to a suitable characterization of the texture component. We then formulate a cartoon-texture decomposition model as a convex optimization problem, where the simultaneous estimation of the cartoon and texture components from a given image or degraded observation is executed by minimizing the total variation and BNN. In addition, patterns of texture extending in different directions are extracted separately, which is a special feature of the proposed model and of benefit to texture analysis and other applications. Furthermore, the model can handle various types of degradation occurring in image processing, including blur+missing pixels with several types of noise. By rewriting the problem via variable splitting, the so-called alternating direction method of multipliers becomes applicable, resulting in an efficient algorithmic solution to the problem. Numerical examples illustrate that the proposed model is very selective to patterns of texture, which makes it produce better results than state-of-the-art decomposition models.
This research is motivated by two inter‐related arguments. Humour and cartooning in children are useful means to (1) address sensitive socio‐political issues and (2) foster empathic concern and ...perspective‐taking. Humorous cartoons and multimodal narratives were created by 10–13‐year olds in school workshops about social inequality and social empathy. Students made cartoons related to concrete situations of economic, gender, racial and ethnic inequality. Children showed empathic concern towards the victims depicted, evidenced by representing positive empathy between characters or by denouncing a lack of empathy. This research suggests that composing humorous multimodal narratives can favour immersive experiences, perspective‐taking, empathy and pro‐sociality.
The name "Heidi" is known and loved all over the world, due to Swiss author, Johanna Spyri's works, Heidis Lehr- und Wanderjahre (1880) and Heidi kann brauchen, was es gelernt hat (1881), which form ...part of the classic international children's literature canon. These stories have since crossed national boarders, by manifesting transnationally in several culture products. The focus of this article lies on the transnational trafic between the original Heidi (1881) and its adaptations. Because "Heidi" as a cultural phenomenon contains universal themes, the product was able to spread globally. This journey stretches from the Swiss Alps, to Japan and finally finds a home in South Africa and Afrikaans. Included in the article is an overview of how the Heidi text manifested in several cultures and its transnational movement, spanning time and place. The popularity of the animation series in South Africa among Afrikaans speaking people is analysed, along with suggestions for possible reasons for this big following and prevalence . The central argument of the article is that "Heidi" as cultural product has had a transnational journey from the Alps, to anime and Afrikaans. Keywords: "Heidi", anime, transnationalism, cultural product, Afrikaner identity.
Stan Cross's "For gorsake, stop laughing: this is serious!" (Smith's Weekly, 1933) is the symbol and bellwether of the Australian cartooning tradition. It is often lionised as a national treasure, ...but its archival history has been perilous in a way that shows a lack of care amounting almost to national negligence. The original of this most famous cartoon of the Depression era was lost for 80 years before being rediscovered in 2014, and this article notes for the first time that Trove Newspapers lacks a record of its initial publication. We use this troubled material history of one significant cartoon to raise a range of issues about the quality and purpose of collecting and presenting Australian cartoons as a resource for Australian studies in fields ranging from media and humour studies to cultural and political history.
