The smartphone aesthetics of mobility in Kate Evans’s Threads and Reinhard Kleist’s An Olympic Dream

Bibliographic Data

ID13002604
AuthorsElizabeth “biz” Nijdam (0000-0001-5683-1602, University of British Columbia, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume12
Issue2
Pages513-534
Publication date2021-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCrossings Journal of Migration and Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2040-4344 • E-ISSN: 2040-4352
PublisherIntellect (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1386/cjmc_00048_1
OpenAlexW4210360477
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited13

In the last decade, comics and graphic novels on migration have become an essential forum for representing refugee experience. This emergent genre of graphic narration not only offers the representation of migrant hardships from the subjective perspective of refugees, artists and volunteers working in the community, comics on the refugee crisis also develop empathy and awareness for the plight of migrants internationally by giving a voice to countless nameless – and often faceless – migrants, whose images circulate widely in the media. Moreover, comic artists working on refugee and migrant subjects are inventing new visual languages to express these individuals’ perilous journeys from war-torn regions of the Middle East, Africa and Asia to European soil, incorporating the very media technologies essential for migration – and its representation – into the comics form. Looking at the smartphone and social media aesthetics of two comics on global forced migration, Kate Evans’s Threads: From the Refugee Crisis and Reinhard Kleist’s An Olympic Dream: The Story of Samia Yusuf Omar , this article assesses the significance of incorporating the technologies of migration into its representation

Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Comics · Dream · Literature · Media studies · Narrative · Perspective (graphical · Political science · Refugee · Representation (politics · Sociology · Utopia · Visual arts · Comics and Graphic Narratives · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · History · Law · Migration, Refugees, and Integration · Psychology

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