Mapping Memory: Readings by Lynda Barry and Alison Bechdel April 15, 2011

Readings by Lynda Barry and Alison Bechdel, followed by conversation moderated by Hillary Chute.

Graphic Women: Comics, Autobiography, and Mapping Memory:
Lynda Barry and Alison Bechdel have created two of the most significant autobiographies of the 21st-century—in comics form. Graphic Women will focus on how two of the most important living cartoonists have presented aspects of their lives in both words and images, for comics autobiographies have changed the field of contemporary narrative. How are lives mapped out in words and images? How does drawing, in addition to writing, capture memory? How do images express the past? Bechdel has said, “I always felt like there was something inherently autobiographical about cartooning,” while Barry has remarked, “I always think of images as lowering the drawbridge where stuff can cross over—memory.” What does this innovative form of comics bring to the presentation of private and public histories?

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