Date of Award

Spring 5-20-2022

Author's School

Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts

Author's Department

Graduate School of Art

Degree Name

Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Illustration & Visual Culture

Degree Type

Thesis

Abstract

This essay imagines fictional storytelling and urban practices of maintenance, repair, and care as interrelated to one another. They are both practices engaged in building a better world. Urban scholars like Gautam Bhan, Shannon Mattern, and David Harvey propose the city as a space for envisioning the kind of community we want to be—a space for working towards our collective future. By engaging in fictional storytelling, I argue, we are doing the same thing: the dual work of taking from fact and representing it to an audience while also engaging in imagining and world-building. This is also a practice of constructing, repairing, maintaining, and caring. As the essay argues, fictional storytelling draws from traditions of agitprop to imagine new futures. It also makes a case for how creators of comics can learn from urban practices to create spaces to form community and imagine a more just world through their practice.

Language

English

Program Chair

John Hendrix

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