The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics

Please join us for a public discussion of The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics. The New Mutants explores the queer history of superhero comics in the late 20th century; with case studies on The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Silver Surfer, and Captain America among many others, the book explores how mainstream comics engaged with the left-wing politics of women’s and gay liberation, black power, and third world movements since the 1950s. Author Ramzi Fawaz will join scholars and cultural critics Rebecca Wanzo (U of Washington, St. Louis) and Alexandro Segade to discuss queerness, comics, and the politics of popular culture. The conversation will include a Q&A with the audience. To reserve a copy of The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (NYU Press) please write to us at contact@bgsqd.com. Ramzi Fawaz is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is the author of The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics (NYU Press: Fall 2015), which received the 2012 Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies Fellowship award for best first book manuscript in LGBT Studies. His research and writing has been published in GLQ, American Literature, Callaloo, and Anthropological Quarterly. Alexandro Segade is a video and performance artist whose collaborative works use theater, genre, play and spectacle to confront conditions of mediation, alienation, identification and difference. Founder of the collective My Barbarian, which received the 2013 Foundation For Contemporary Art award for performance and had video and performance included in the 2014 Whitney Biennial, Segade has co-directed the group since 2000. Segade leads classes on performance art internationally, most recently on a pedagogical workshop project in Jerusalem funded by Creative Capital. He currently teaches part-time at Parsons the New School, and serves as faculty for Film/Video MFA program at the Milton Avery School of the Arts, Bard College. Rebecca Wanzo is Associate Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Associate Director of the Center for the Humanities at Washington University in St Louis. Her first book, The Suffering Will Not Be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling was published by SUNY in 2009. She has published essays on African American literature and comics, race and child abduction, black women film and television performers, and the role of feelings in police brutality discourse.