Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780814214183)

A CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title for 2020

In Unstable Masks: Whiteness and American Superhero Comics, Sean Guynes and Martin Lund bring together a series of essays that contextualize the histories and stakes of whiteness studies, superhero comics, and superhero studies for academics, fans, and media-makers alike. The volume illustrates how the American comic book superhero is fundamentally a figure of white power and white supremacy and ultimately calls for diversity in superhero comics as well as a democratized media culture.
Contributors not only examine superhero narratives but also delve into the production, distribution, audience, and reception of those narratives, highlighting the imbrication of forces that have helped to create, normalize, question, and sometimes even subvert American beliefs about whiteness and race. Unstable Masks considers the co-constitutive nature of identity, representation, narrative, production and consumption, and historical and cultural contexts in forging the stereotypes that decide who gets to be a superhero and who gets to be American on the four-color pages of comic books.


Author: Sean Guynes
ISBN-10: 0814214185
ISBN-13: 9780814214183
Publisher: Ohio State University Press
Language: English
Published: 01/07/2020
Pages: 300
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.20lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.30w x 0.90d