First of its Kind, World-Class Graphic Novels Collection Launches at Cambridge University’s Lucy Cavendish College

Building an academic collection that starts with work by women, BIPOC and queer creators

CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM, October 9, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Lucy Cavendish College at the University of Cambridge in the U.K. is launching a first of its kind, world-class permanent collection of graphic novels, making the Lucy Cavendish College Library home to one of the world’s most ambitious compilations of the works of artists and writers in this relatively new field. With multiple new academic journals on comics and graphic novels launched in recent years, it’s a cutting-edge discipline, exactly the sort of subject for a library such as this. This initial core collection, which is intended to expand in coming years, supports interdisciplinary research by curating influential graphic novels from groundbreaking indie and LGBTQ+ authors, women and people of color.

Joe Sutliff Sanders, PhD, a Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College and an American scholar of the genre, personally designed the initial list of texts for the collection, specifically seeking books available in English that have emerged as cornerstones of the field. Among the core collection are the March trilogy by John Lewis, Alison Bechtel’s Dykes to Watch Out For and Fun Home, Robert Crumb’s The Life and Death of Fritz the Cat, Phoebe Gloeckner’s The Diary of a Teenage Girl, Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s Abandon the Old in Tokyo, Rutu Modan’s Exit Wounds, Daniel Clowes’ Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron and Ghost World, Thi Bui’s The Best We Could Do, Patti Laboucane-Benson’s The Outside Circle, HG Oesterheld’s The Eternaut, CeCe Bell’s El Deafo and Art Spiegelman’s The Complete Maus, to name just a few.

“Lucy Cavendish College has an excellent library with its own long-held tradition of supporting writers through the Lucy Cavendish Fiction Prize, famous for helping undiscovered female writers launch their literary careers,” noted Dr. Sanders. “It is also the most diverse College at Cambridge, and there is considerable enthusiasm for new ideas.”

Bryan Talbot, known as the “Father of the British Graphic Novel,” and his wife, Mary, a graphic novels author and scholar, have donated a number of their works to the collection. Bryan is a British comics artist and writer, perhaps best known as the creator of The Adventures of Luther Arkwright and its sequel, Heart of Empire, as well as the Grandville series of books. Mary and Bryan co-created Dotter of Her Father's Eyes, which won the 2012 Costa Biography Award, and are now working together on their fifth book, the graphic biography, Armed with Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington. They are also two of the three founder patrons of the Lakes International Comic Art Festival.

Dr. Sanders, after teaching English at a junior high school in a small town in Japan and more than a decade teaching in literature departments at prestigious U.S. universities, has been able to combine his passion for graphic novels and literature as a University Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education and a Fellow at Lucy Cavendish College. As part of the international critical conversation, he has published books on classic girls’ novels, the Belgian cartoonist Hergé, children’s nonfiction and critical engagement, children’s animation, and metafiction. His most recent book is Batman: The Animated Series, published by Wayne University Press. Current academic projects include research on autism and comics and the role that comics and graphic novels have played in shaping understandings of literacy.

Donations to support the Lucy Cavendish College Library’s Graphic Novels Collection can be made here: https://www.lucy.cam.ac.uk/single-donation

About Lucy Cavendish College
Lucy Cavendish College is one of the 31 constituent colleges within the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. The College’s mission is to unlock the potential of exceptional students from non-traditional and underrepresented backgrounds who are driven by a desire to make a difference and who are committed to having a positive and lasting impact on society. Founded in 1965, the College is named in honor of Lucy Cavendish, a leading 19th century activist for the reform of women's education. Originally an institution that transformed the life chances of mature women, the College decided to open those opportunities to students of all ages in 2020 and all genders in 2021. The College is truly a dynamic, inclusive and supportive global community with international students from 70 countries making up a significant proportion of the student population.

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