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Student profile

Amy Mazowita

Thesis supervisor: Arseli Dokumaci
Thesis title: 
'Graphic Care: Auto/Biographical Comics as Mental Health Resources

Amy Mazowita (she/her) holds a BA in English and an MA in Cultural Studies from the University of Winnipeg. Her PhD research is situated at the intersections of Communication and Media Studies, Comics Studies, Critical Disability Studies, and Mad Studies, and is focused on representations of mental illness in auto/biographical comics.

Amy’s doctoral project considers the specific verbal-visual affordances of the comics medium, explores how graphic texts are used to visually disrupt normative perspectives of stigmatized mental health conditions, and examines how comics are being used as agential modes of self-expression.

Amy’s research is also interested in how readers of print and web comics are engaging with graphic mental illness narratives, and in how readers of graphic texts are using ‘the comics scene’ of social media as a site for self- and collective care.

Amy is supervised by Prof. Arseli Dokumaci, Canada Research Chair in Critical Disability Studies and Media Technologies and the Coordinator of Access in the Making (AIM) Lab. Amy is a member of the AIM Lab’s executive board, a member of the Feminist Media Studio, and works as a Teaching Assistant in the Department of Communication Studies.

Publications

Mazowita, A. (October 15-16, 2021). Towards a network of graphic care: The comics, comments, and communities of Instagram [Presentation].

80 Years and Beyond: A Virtual Symposium on Canadian Comics, event sponsored by Brescia University College, University of Winnipeg, Canadian Literature: A Quarterly of Criticism and Review, and Sequential: Canadian Independent Comic Book Magazine. https://www.canadiancomics.org/academic-conference

Callison, C., Rifkind, C., with contributions by Sinclair, N. J., Ballantyne, S., Odjick, J., & Daigneault, T., and Mazowita, A. (2019). Introduction: “Indigenous comics and graphic novels: An annotated bibliography.” Jeunesse: Young Peoples, Texts, Cultures, 11(1), 139-55. https://jeunessejournal.ca/index.php/yptc/article/view/495

Daigneault (Métis), T., Mazowita, A., Rifkind, C., and Callison (Tahltan), C. (2019). Indigenous comics and graphic novels: An annotated bibliography. Jeunesse: Young People, Texts, Cultures, 11(1), i-xxxvi, https://jeunessejournal.ca/index.php/yptc/article/view/504

Mazowita, A. (2018, July 26). Cycles of culture: The revitalization and gentrification of downtown Winnipeg. Centre for research in cultural studies at the University of Winnipeg. https://www.uwinnipeg.ca/crics/projects/cycles-of-culture-the-revitalization-and-gentrification-of-downtown-winnipeg.html

Forthcoming

Dokumaci, A., Mazowita, A., Stainton, J., Goberdhan, N., Bessette-Viens, R., and Lucas, S. (2021). Spaced apart: Autoethnographies of access throughout the Covid-19 pandemic. “Dis-abling Spaces and Cultures in Times of Crisis” [Special Issue]. Space and Culture. Abstract accepted.

Mazowita, A. (2021). Graphic communities: Comics as visual and virtual resources for self- and collective care. “Comics in and of The Moment” [Special Issue]. The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship. Manuscript submitted.

Mazowita, A. (2021). Privileged witnessing and the graphic self in Sarah Glidden’s How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less. Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, 25 pages. Accepted pending revisions.

Social media links:

Amy Mazowita's instagram
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