Narratives of Student Revenge and Teacher Murder in Comics: Detailing a Fundamental Adolescent Need

• In Event: Friday Roundtable Session 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Curricular Possibilities: Reflections and Narratives of (Cultural) Education (Table 26)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the subject of hatred directed at teachers in comics that are killed and murdered through related to their students. While some of these deaths take place in the physical world of story, others materialize in the representation of character’s fantasies. With reference to a number of contemporary comics, I therefore theorize the meanings of students’ revenge acts and fantasies. I also discuss the concept of horror as an affective genre, prompting readers to face the fault lines between what we can and cannot admit about ourselves. Finally, I discuss the value of reading such comics, which have the freedom to say potentially disturbing and depressing things about education that cannot always be otherwise voiced.

Author

• David Lewkowich, University of Alberta