Following our year-end listing of the top new stories in 2019, the question arose as to what were the top overall postings in 2019. That is, what were the most-read articles, regardless of what year they were published.
So, to satisfy curiosity, here are Sacred and Sequential‘s most-read pages over the course of 2019:
Review – Toscano and Hartmann-Dow’s The Amazing Adventures of the Afterbirth of Jesus
More Than You Ever Wanted to Know on Black Panther and Religion
Sacred and Sequential‘s own Elizabeth Coody was featured by the Sioux City Journal this past week for her work at Morningside College and recent participation in the “Graphic Novels and Comics across the Humanities” conference. Food and Lifestyle reporter Earl Horlyk notes Dr. Coody’s astute observation that illustrations of Jesus as Caucasian or even quite muscular say “more about an artist’s interpretation than anything in the Bible.”
Additionally, S&S would like to further applaud our colleague for the wonderful sentiment behind her quote: “Well, I think it’s a sin to depict Jesus as dull.”
[The following piece was originally published for the Women Write About Comics website, and it is reposted here with the author’s permission.]
Out there, somewhere, is a woman who writes about comics who wants to turn that writing to a comics dissertation or thesis, or at least I sure hope there is! The field is wide open and ready for more. For the uninitiated, a dissertation or thesis is the long essay or project that serves as the capstone for most advanced degrees (especially doctoral degrees) in the sciences and humanities. There is some degree of coursework or class-type work in most programs, but this is the project that determines whether or not you earn the degree. The nature and form of these projects has been under debate in recent years, but the actual production of some object that concludes the PhD remains a constant. The internet has worked alongside the fast-moving and collaborative nature of digital scholarship in general to jolt the usually slow-to-change academic establishment. By making wide varieties of information more available to a wider public and expanding the possibilities of collaboration, digital forms of scholarship have disturbed the idea of authority. This idea of authority is what allows some group to grant a degree to someone else. You can see why this sort of debate can be disturbing!
What I’ll talk about most here is writing about comics in a dissertation as opposed to writing a dissertation as a comic. Be warned: the minute you start pairing talk of “comics” and “dissertation” people are going to assume you’re writing a comic. For some of you, this will be a fantastic way to go. If your committee has trouble imagining your dissertation as a comic, you might point out Nick Sousanis’s recently published comics dissertation Unflattening. His process bringing the dissertation into comics form is lovingly documented all over the internet by academics and comics people alike, such as here, here, and here. Such a precedent is wonderful to present to a wary committee. If their hesitation comes from fears that you won’t be taken seriously, it’s nice to have a publication from Harvard University Press to point out. Of course, you should listen to your committee, more on them in a moment.
Continue reading Comics Academe: How To Write a Comics Dissertation
Those not fortunate enough to attend the 2017 American Academy of Religion annual conference, particularly its final morning of presentations, are in luck: We’re joined by a frequent Sacred & Sequential contributor, Iliff School of Theology’s Elizabeth Coody, for a redux of her paper, “The More Savage Sword: A Theory of Biblical Text Used for Shock.” For the podcast, visual input is offered by host A. David Lewis, but online audiences can follow her accompanying Prezi here.
On Saturday, November 18, 2017, the American Academy of Religion annual conference hosted the panel “Responses to Muslim Superheroes,” including presentations by Elizabeth Coody, Mohamed Hassan, Constance Kassor, and Aaron Ricker, with Scott Gardner as presider and A. David Lewis as respondent. Here are their presentations in their entirety from that morning session.
