Authored books

Experiencing Visual Storyworlds: Focalization in Comics. (with Silke Horstkotte) | The Ohio State University Press, 2022.

Experiencing Visual Storyworlds: Focalization in Comics examines focalization in a number of aesthetically ambitious graphic narratives to show how focalization can be a valuable concept for studying the relation between a narrator’s reporting, characters’ processing, and their embedding within a graphic narrative world, but also readers’ response to and engagement with the narrative world. Experiencing Visual Storyworlds: Focalization in Comics provides a detailed analysis of stylistic markers of focalization and assesses their practical impact within the narrative world across a representative range of different comics texts and genres. The main goal of this book is to show that comics are a meta-phenomenological medium, one specifically devoted to “what it’s like,” and thus particularly suited to the study of focalization.

Purchase book

A Concise Dictionary of Comics | University of Mississippi Press, 2022.

Over one thousand terms related to comics studies, collecting, and publishing!

Written in straightforward, jargon-free language, A Concise Dictionary of Comics guides students, researchers, readers, and educators of all ages and at all levels of comics expertise. It provides them with a dictionary that doubles as a compendium of comics scholarship.

A Concise Dictionary of Comics provides clear and informative definitions for each term. It includes twenty-five witty illustrations, and pairs most defined terms with references to books, articles, book chapters, and other relevant critical sources. All references are dated and listed in the extensive, up-to-date bibliography of comics scholarship towards the end of the dictionary. Each term is also categorized according to type in a table of contents by groupings. This organization serves as a pedagogical aid for teachers and students learning about a specific facet of comics studies and as a research tool for scholars who are unfamiliar with a particular term, but know what category it falls into. These features make A Concise Dictionary of Comics especially useful for critics and students, teachers and researchers, and a vital reference to anyone else who wants to learn more about comics.

Purchase book