Balancing Creativity and Coping
How Comic Art Reveals Challenges for the Survivor-Folklorist
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5616030 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Nic Hartmann (nic hartmann is a Halifax-based folklorist, comic artist, and first-year Master of Divinity student at the Atlantic School of Theology, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 138 |
| Issue | 550 |
| Pages | 480-490 |
| Publication date | 2025-10-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American Folklore (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8715 • E-ISSN: 1535-1882 |
| Publisher | University of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.5406/15351882.138.550.08 |
| OpenAlex | W4414993937 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 3 |
Comics can be an important and overlooked transmitter of folk culture through documentation of everyday practices and experiences. As comics have often been a way of telling survivor stories, it is possible to look at how informal comic-making not only plays a role in presenting survivor testimony but also makes for a fuller form of ethnographic and autoethnographic documentation. In this comics-form contribution, I will address how my role as a tradition bearer of a family comic art practice was combined with an ethnographic research background in 2020 to create Derecho Days, a series of daily comic panels about life in the wake of the catastrophic derecho in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. This piece strives to demonstrate the challenges that survivor-folklorists may face when determining what, when, and how to document their experiences
Comics · Creativity · Documentation · Ethnography · Everyday life · Face (sociological concept) · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Cultural and Artistic Studies · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2025 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |