This talk presents the journey of women creators and characters in comics around the world along with research from an ongoing project by Arun Prasad and Aarthi Parthasarathy on the history of comics in India. This session would specifically look at the representation of women and gender in sequential art – beginning with the emergence of comics in the late 1800s in the UK, post the advent of the printing press, and traces the history of the medium alongside the political movements of the suffragette era and modern feminism in the 1950s and 60s, culminating in present day. We explore the links between politics, pop culture and representation as well as changing technologies and possibilities. Along the way, we touch on topics like the first black female comic artist Jackie Ormes and character, Torchy Brown and the creation of Wonder Woman among others. We then come to the story of women and gender in comics in India and the subcontinent, looking through a range of work from political cartoons to vernacular comics to the graphic novel and the webcomic.

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  Aarthi Parthasarathy

  India

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  Arun Prasad

  India