Dr Harriet EH Earle FHEA, PhD

I am a comics and pop culture scholar, with special interest in representations of trauma, conflict, and violence. Although I am primarily a theoretician, I teach on the Creative Writing BA and very much enjoy bringing my research into the practical arena. I’m interested in socially-engaged writing and the ways in which we can use our creative outputs as tools for social engagement and social change, a theme that comes through in all my teaching.  I am a research fellow at the Centre for War, Atrocity, and Genocide at Nipissing University in Canada.

Specialist areas of interest

Writing with images
Socially-engaged writing
Comics studies
Representations of traumatic experience and violence
Science Fiction
Conflict and war narratives

Subject area

English

BA Creative Writing; BA English

Modules

• Story and Image (BA level 4 core module)
• Introduction to Critical Theory (BA level 4 core module)
• Creative Writing: Short Story (BA Level 5 core module)
• Science Fiction and Fantasy (BA level 6 option module)

At the moment, I am writing a book with my co-author at CWAG on the Vietnam War in American comics. We are aiming to produce a comprehensive study of the ways in which comics from 1945 to the present day have engaged with the USA’s longest war. I am also working on smaller projects about PTSD in comics, and issues surrounding translation in visual forms.  My research aims to answer the question 'so what'? I want to write about why we should care about these issues. What is it about the current climate that makes comics important documents in the wider discussions of people and politics?

Research Fellowship - Centre for War, Atrocity and Genocide at Nipissing University, Canada

Journal articles

Earle, H. (2020). The Politics of Lace in Kate Evans’ Threads: From the Refugee Crisis (2017). The Comics Grid : Journal of Comics Scholarship, 10 (1), 13. http://doi.org/10.16995/cg.215

Earle, H., & Clark, J. (2019). Telling national stories in American Horror Story. European journal of American culture, 38 (1), 5-13. http://doi.org/10.1386/ejac.38.1.5_7

Earle, H. (2018). A new face for an old fight: Reimagining Vietnam in Vietnamese-American graphic memoirs. Studies in Comics, 9 (1), 87-105. http://doi.org/10.1386/stic.9.1.87_1

Earle, H. (2018). Conflict then; trauma now : reading Vietnam across the decades in American comics. European Journal of American Culture, 37 (2), 159-172. http://doi.org/10.1386/ejac.37.2.159_1

Earle, H. (2017). Epistemic Breaks, Post-9/11 Trauma, and Siri Hustvedt. ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, 30 (3), 198-202. http://doi.org/10.1080/0895769x.2016.1273753

Earle, H. (2017). “A Convenient Place for Inconvenient People”: madness, sex and the asylum in American Horror Story. The Journal of Popular Culture, 50 (2), 259-275. http://doi.org/10.1111/jpcu.12508

Knowles, S., Peacock, J., & Earle, H. (2016). Introduction: Trans/formation and the graphic novel. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 52 (4), 378-384. http://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2016.1228513

Earle, H. (2016). Strange migrations: an essay/interview with Shaun Tan. Journal of Postcolonial Writing, 52 (4), 385-398. http://doi.org/10.1080/17449855.2016.1219139

Earle, H. (2016). Creating the traumatic body : female genitals as wounds in Antichrist. Film International, 14 (1), 35-43. http://doi.org/10.1386/fiin.14.1.35_1

Earle, H.E.H. (2014). My Friend Dahmer: The comic as Bildungsroman. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 5 (4), 429-440. http://doi.org/10.1080/21504857.2014.916329

Book chapters

Earle, H. (2019). Persepolis. In Handbook of Comics and Graphic Narratives. De Gruyter

Earle, H. (2019). Comics and Graphic Novels. In The Routledge Companion to Twenty-First Century Literary Fiction. Routledge

Books

Earle, H. (2020). Comics An Introduction. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Comics-An-Introduction/Earle/p/book/9780367322410

Earle, H. (Ed.). (2019). Gender, Sexuality and Queerness in American Horror Story Critical Essays. McFarland. https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/gender-sexuality-and-queerness-in-american-horror-story/

Earle, H. (Ed.). (2019). Gender, Sexuality and Queerness in American Horror Story Critical Essays. McFarland. https://mcfarlandbooks.com/product/gender-sexuality-and-queerness-in-american-horror-story/

Earle, H. (2017). Comics, trauma, and the new art of war. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi. https://www.upress.state.ms.us/Books/C/Comics-Trauma-and-the-New-Art-of-War2

PhD in History and Visual Narratives (2nd supervisor)