On Gutters and Ethnography
In a departure from more conventional communication methods in academia, I’m exploring how comics–a medium I love to read and am learning to make (thank you to my teacher in pre-pandemic times, Julian Peters!)–speak to ethnographic practice. In particular, I am wrestling with how the gutter between comics panels is something to consider in terms of ethnographic narratives. The work I refer to below is Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics, which is an excellent resource for comics artists and readers alike. For those who are interested in examples of the intersections of ethnography and comics, as a very small start, I really like Tings Chak’s Undocumented: the Architecture of Migrant Detention (unfortunately currently out of print), Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do, Safdar Ahmed’s “Villawood“, the satire/non-fiction comics website The Nib, Eleanor Davis’s You & a Bike & a Road, and “At Work Inside our Detention Centres: A Guard’s Story” by Sam Wallman and others at the now-defunct Global Mail. There are so many brilliant comics artists out there, and there’s even a whole American Anthropologist piece about anthropology and comics! (If you’re really stuck and need comic recommendations, Tweet at me with a few books you like or subjects you’re interested in. Or, share your own recommendations in the comments!)
My next post will be more text-heavy, but until then: my short meditation on comics.
Rine Vieth is a PhD candidate at McGill University. Their current research explores how the UK asylum system assesses religious belief, they work towards a more curious (and kind) academy, and they live in Tiotiá:ke/Mooniyaang (Montréal) with their partner and cat.
Their website is here: https://rinevieth.carrd.co/
2 Replies to “On Gutters and Ethnography”
This is totally beautiful!
This is such a nice and thoughtful reflection. I’ll be thinking about “gutters” for a while and just ordered some of the recommendations in the post. Thanks for this!