Human Rights, Trauma, Art and Recovery in the Graphic Novel

For Monday 29th April 9:30am-11:15am two speakers, a graphic novelist and a theorist of graphic novels, will zoom in from Australia and Cyprus, to give talks on what graphic novels can tell us about the role of the arts in trauma, recovery, and in enacting social change.

The speakers are:

Safdar Ahmed, graphic novelist and academic, who will discuss his work “Still Alive” (available in the library), which is based on his work with the community art organisation the Refugee Art Project at an Australian Immigration detention centre. Ahmed has a PhD from the University of Sydney titled “Complex Modernity: Re-examining Discourses of Islamic Reform”, and is working, among other topics, on Orientalism, islamophobia and zombies. https://safdarahmed.com/

Olga Michael, independent academic and secondary school teacher, will give a talk, titled “'Trauma in Villawood: Icons of (In)Justice in Australia's Carceral Spaces of Detention.'

Olga has published widely on graphic novels, including her recent monograph “Human Rights in Graphic Life Narrative: Reading and Witnessing Violations of the 'Other' in Anglophone Works” (Bloomsbury, available on Oria). Olga has a PhD from the University of Manchester on the construction of female subjectivity in autobiographical comics. https://www.bloomsbury.com/in/human-rights-in-graphic-life-narrative-9781350329768/.

Please contact the organiser Yasemin Hacioglu to receive the zoom link before the event if you wish to join.