A talk about Black Panther, by Rebecca Wanzo

On Thursday, April 19, at 5:30pm, Rebecca Wanzo presented a talk titled "Black Panther: 'Post'-Civil-Rights Hero in Revolutionary Times" in Law School Room 1-01 (the Moot Court Room). “Recent adaptations,” Wanzo argued, “of black comic book heroes produced in the wake of the "classical" period of the Civil Rights movement--Luke Cage, Black Panther, and Black Lightning-- are still haunted by some of the problems in the source material. How are the heroes out of time and of our times simultaneously?”

Portrait of Wanzo by comics artist and scholar John Jennings. Her essay “Superhero: Feminist. Superpower: Killer of Joy, Destroyer of Worlds” appeared in “Bitch Planet #9.”

Rebecca Wanzo is associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and associate director of the Center for the Humanities. She is a founding board member of the Comics Studies Society (CSS), the first professional organization for comics researchers in the United States. She recently contributed to “The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art,”which won the 2016 Eisner Award (the “Oscars of comics”) for Best Academic/ Scholarly Work; and to the feminist sci-fi comic “Bitch Planet.” Wanzo is the author of "The Suffering Will Not Be Televised: African American Women and Sentimental Political Storytelling."

This event was made possible by generous support from Fordham’s Chief Diversity Officer, and is co-sponsored by the departments of African and African American Studies, Communication and Media Studies, and English, as well as the Programs in American Studies and Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. All are welcome! RSVP at https://www.facebook.com/events/129691737884994/