On Tuesday, September 25th, at 6:00 p.m. in the Hill Memorial Library lecture hall on the LSU campus, noted graphic novelist and cartoonist James Sturm will be giving a talk called “James Sturm’s America: Cartooning on the Frontier.”
Well known among mainstream comics fans for his Unstable Molecules, a four-issue limited series (now collected in trade paperback) that took the form of a faux tell-all biography to examine the historical and cultural currents electrifying America when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby created the Fantastic Four, Sturm’s newest work, James Sturm’s America: God, Gold, and Golems collects his loose trilogy of historical graphic fictions about forgotten or neglected moments in American history. These include The Revival, an examination of the meanings of religious fervor in America through the story of the ecstacies and excesses of an early nineteenth century tent revival; Hundreds of Feet Below Daylight (1998), a tale of desperation, salvation, and gold mining in the 1870s; and perhaps his best known work, The Golem’s Mighty Swing(2001), which chronicles the exploits of a barnstorming 1920s Jewish baseball team called the Stars of David; through their story, Sturm deepens and complicates his analysis of religion, ethnicity, materialism, and the American dream.
A reception and book-signing will follow his lecture; copies of James Sturm’s America will be available. Further information from the Hill Memorial Library blog:
His lecture, “James Sturm’s America: Cartooning on the Frontier,” is co-sponsored by the LSU Libraries, the Department of English, the School of Art, and the College of Arts and Sciences, and is presented in association with the exhibition “Super Stories: A Brief History of Comics.” The lecture and exhibition are free and open to the public.[...]
A pioneer in the field of comics art education, Sturm is the founder of the National Association of Comics Arts Educators, which provides resources for high school and college teachers seeking to integrate comics into their classrooms, and he currently serves as director of The Center for Cartoon Studies.
On September 25, Sturm will discuss the history, development, and cultural role of comic books as well as his own artistic process and philosophies. A reception and book signing will follow his talk.
The exhibition “Super Stories” will be on display in Hill Memorial Library through October 20. For more information, visit the Special Collections Web site at www.lib.lsu.edu/special.
Full coverage of this event coming soon!
How fortunate this speaker was to have his audience filled with Fury!