UDTR — Radar mondial des droits de la Nature

“Historical political representation in 20th Century comic books: Wonder Woman as missing link between the waves of feminism”

Identification

Clé publique

radar:r-caa4ce179323059fb513ce30d47bfb78

Auteurs

James Guttridge

Année déclarée

—

Langue déclarée

en

Type source

COMM

Première détection

2026-11-13T15:29:22.200007+00:00

Dernière observation des métadonnées

2026-11-13T15:29:22.200007+00:00

Dernière vérification HTTP

Non effectuée

Institutions déclarées par la source

Université Paris Cité · Laboratoire de Recherche sur les Cultures Anglophones · Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique · Sorbonne Université · Ecole doctorale 131 · Université Paris Diderot - Paris 7

Résumé documentaire — langue originale

A recurring concept in comic books is their drawing of inspiration from historical political motifs and figures. On the one hand, comic books’ tales of larger-than-life symbols represent the age-old, universal themes of righting wrongs and standing up against oppressors for those who cannot do so themselves. On the other hand, the ways in which superheroes and their ordeals embody these themes often represent the anxieties of the specific eras in which they are being written, and are perhaps a way to confront these anxieties. In order to bridge the gap between universal and specific concerns, comic books rely on a narrativising process; using story and mythical figures such as superheroes to better understand the world. This paper will show that a balance must be struck between the mythical (the superhero), and the realistic, i.e., the representation of real-world historical political situations. Through microanalysis of both the narrative structure and the images themselves, this paper focuses on the historical political aspects present in issues of Wonder Woman from the 1940s and the 1970s published by DC Comics. These include the waves of feminism, more specifically how the character of Wonder Woman can be seen as being the ‘missing link’ between the first and second waves, a theory put forward by historian Jill Lepore in her work The Secret History of Wonder Woman (2014). The questions thus placed under analysis are: to what extent is the didactic process of historical political representation facilitated by the postmodern aspects of the comic book medium? What is the relationship between the superhero and gender and politics, and in what ways may this affect how one looks at the past? I find that the didactic quality of the comic book genre was able to emerge through its ‘hybrid’ nature, namely the interplay between text and image, with one interpreting the other.

Identifiants

HAL

hal-04659552

Repères documentaires

Famille documentaire

unknown

Types déclarés par les sources

COMM

Les mentions d’entités ne constituent pas une preuve de reconnaissance juridique. La juridiction étudiée est distincte du pays d’affiliation des auteurs.

Sources

HAL · Document 1

• Document · https://hal.science/hal-04659552v1

Statut documentaire

Pertinence à examiner

Bibliothèque

Cette identité n’est pas encore intégrée à la Bibliothèque juridique.