Document Type
Honors Paper
Abstract
When scholars examine a society in search of the principles that it holds most dear, popular culture promises an attractive and engaging medium where one can search for answers. Intellectual disciplines such as art history, film studies, and literature demonstrate a constructive merging of critical thinking and entertainment media, whereas other art forms are being mapped out as academic disciplines for the first time. Comic studies, is one of these outcast art forms. Due to comics’ unserious nature and association with juvenile literature, the medium is only recently being molded into a coherent academic field, though comics have had a history nearly as long as cinema. Despite the hesitation shown by academics in embracing comics as an independent field, "picture stories" have assisted a range of existing disciplines such as the three listed above, in addition to Gender and Ethnic Studies, Sociology, Anthropology, Economics, Philosophy, and History.
Date Accepted/Awarded
3-2015
Award/Distinction
Library Research Prize - Third Place Winner
Course
HIS499 Senior Seminar
First Advisor/Reader
Gehrz, Christopher A.
Recommended Citation
Van Wyk, Kelly, "The Paneled Lives of Extraordinary Women: Comic Books, Superheroines, and American Women in the 1940s" (2015). Honors Student Works. 8.
https://spark.bethel.edu/honors-works/8
Reflection on Library Research process required to qualify for Library Research Prize
Terms of Use and License Information
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