SLO Campus
Faster than a Locomotive: How the Superhero Image Creates a Universal Image
Eric Atkinson, English Faculty
Monday, March 11 at 12-1 pm
SLO Library Group Study Area
Faster than a Locomotive: How the Superhero Image Creates a Universal Image
This will be a discussion on how and why our culture creates heroes to fulfill particular needs of society through images and how those images help us to maintain our sense of identity. Further, through the exploration of characters such as Superman, Wonder Woman, The Black Panther, and Battle Pope, this presentation means to explore how an audience reads and understands themselves through what's seen on the screen and comic book page.
Eric Atkinson is currently a PhD. student at University California, Riverside, studying African American Literature with an emphasis in comics, highlighting representations of the African American body. A former McNair Scholar and the 2008 winner of the S. Randolph Edmonds Young Scholar Competition, Mr. Atkinson has published "The Griot: The Rhetorical Impetus of African American Fiction" in the online journal of Gnovis, "Migraine" a short story in CSUSB's Pacific Review, the poem "to get there" in Claremont Graduate's Foothill Journal, vol. 2 issue 1, "Post Script for Gabriel Posser" in Verse/Chorus: A Call and Response Anthology, and short story "And the Rocket's Red Glare" and the poem "Jane Russell's Pose: Or What You Will" in The Chaffey Review: A Creative Collective XI: The informed (un)American. Mr. Atkinson, a member of Sigma Tau Delta, Phi Theta Kappa, and the Golden Key Society, and is currently working on his dissertation on the discrepancy between social narratives and the lived social realities through a focus on representations of the African American body in graphic novels.
