Critical race comics: Centering black subjectivities and teaching racial literacy

Abstract

This article seeks to explore the complexities of Black subjectivities as written and illustrated by comic book creators of color who wrestle with the enigmatic qualities of blackness as they write within and beyond racial imaginaries and social realities. I call these works “critical race comics” to highlight their explicit engagement with the ubiquity of race and racism and other tenets of critical race theory in education. Critical race comics teach through onto-epistemological explorations of blackness and by centering the black gaze in ways that foster humanizing racial discourse in classrooms, develop racial literacy in readers, and contribute to antiracist pedagogy. As such, I position critical race comics as pop culture and curriculum as they reflect larger literary, artistic, and social movements for racial justice in America (e.g. Antislavery, Reconstruction, New Negro, Civil Rights, Black Power, Hip-Hop, and #BlackLivesMatter).

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Deirdre Lynn Hollman

Deirdre Lynn Hollman is a doctoral student in Arts & Humanities at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research spans critical social studies in schools, museums, and community education spaces; historical, visual, racial, and speculative civic literacies; and curriculum inquiry. Her current projects explore race, racism, and antiracism as curriculum discourses in Black community-based education.