Sean Eedy
Carleton University, History, Alumnus
- University of Ottawa | Université d'Ottawa, English and History, AlumnusTrent University, History, Department Memberadd
- Recently having completed my doctorate, my dissertation discusses East German comics as a meeting point between child... moreRecently having completed my doctorate, my dissertation discusses East German comics as a meeting point between childhood development and state power. Using comics as a lens through which to view the history of the GDR, I suggest that as much as the regime hoped to use comics to mold children, the creators and the children themselves used comics to create a space free of the SED's influence. I have also published articles on this in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics with another coming in 2018 in the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies as well as writing on German historical fiction and DEFA animated film.edit
- Jennifer Evansedit
Foundational narratives of the German Democratic Republic as an anti-fascist state subsumed accounts of Jewish suffering and victimisation before and during World War II. Though there was little or no outright denial of the Holocaust,... more
Foundational narratives of the German Democratic Republic as an anti-fascist state subsumed accounts of Jewish suffering and victimisation before and during World War II. Though there was little or no outright denial of the Holocaust, this was instead expressed in terms of Marxist class conflict that valorised socialist resistance and the construction of socialism as a bulwark against future western imperialism. This article examines children’s comics published in East Germany during the 1970s and 1980s. Because of shifting Cold War relations, it was necessary that these socialist comics foreground narratives of the war and Holocaust as episodes of anti-fascist resistance to educate children and develop their awareness of socialist class struggle in the face of increasing western influence. These narratives demonstrated socialist experience in a vacuum, undermining the recognition of Jewish claims to victimhood and of (East) German perpetration to buttress the future of the socialist state through children’s education in comics.
