KU Eichstätt-Ingolstadt
Am Marktplatz 2
85072 Eichstätt
Leonie.Unkel@ku.de
Leonie Unkel is a PhD candidate with the DFG-funded research group “Practicing Place: Socio-Cultural Practices and Epistemic Configurations” at the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt. Before starting her PhD, Leonie completed two bachelor’s degrees in German Language, Literatures and Cultures and English and American Studies at the University of Bamberg. Afterwards she further pursued her studies in English and American Studies in the European Joint Master’s Programme at the University of Bamberg. As part of her master’s programme Leonie spent one term abroad at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. During her master’s, Leonie attended the Graz International Summer School Seggau with the overall theme “Re-Measuring, Re-Calculating, Re-Counting: State – Society – Religion in Transition”, where her first article, “‘The Sun always has a way to reach us’: Exploring Innocence and Experience in Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun” was published in Off Campus: Seggau School of Thought Volume IX. In 2023, she successfully completed her master’s degree with a thesis titled: Towards a Narratology of Age(ing): A Study of Time and Space in Selected Novels by Kazuo Ishiguro. At its centre, her thesis argued that narrative time and narrative space are not universal narrative categories but are dependent on age(ing) in their realisation. Her thesis allowed her to combine her main research interests in postclassical narratologies and age studies and forge a band between the two disciplines. At Practicing Place, Leonie is further developing this perspective in her PhD project, ‘(Situating Ageing: Narrative Negotiations of Age/ing in/and Place in Autobiographical Comic Art’.
Situating Ageing: Narrative Negotiations of Age/ing in/and Place in Autobiographical Comic Art
In my dissertation project I am analysing several contemporary graphic autobiographies, among them Special Exits by Joyce Farmer (2010), Displacement by Lucy Knisley (2015), and The Secret to Superhuman Strength by Alison Bechdel (2021). They are connected through many different strands, and they all show/tell stories about ageing bodies and bodies growing older. As many scholars have acknowledged (El Refaie 2012, Chute 2010), comics, starting with the underground comix (~ 1960-1980) offer an especially productive place for representation of and visibility for marginalized groups and/or subjects. More recently, the varied representations of age/ing in comics have gained scholarly interest. While initially primarily connected with time and temporality, ageing has to be conceptualised as a situated and embodied process.
In my project, I am focused on bodies growing older in place and the intimate connection between ageing bodies and place. My aim is to highlight how the spatiality of the comic medium engages with and is able to construct places as dynamic and practiced. By drawing on narratological insights ranging from contextual to cognitive approaches, the visibility of older characters is emphasized as well as situated on the comic page. Due to the uniqueness of the comic medium, which offers authors and readers an interplay between words and images, the narrative negotiations with place are manifold. Focalization, subjectivity, narrative time, showing vs. telling and other narrative categories play an integral part in the (un)doing of narrative spaces in comics. Thinking this together with age/ing and an embodied reading practice, I will analyse how age/ing in/and place are negotiated on a narrative level and argue for comics as a place where readers can engage with and connect to bodies growing older through an embodied reading practice.
With place as a central component of my research, I will contribute to current conversations around place as a socially produced, fluid and practiced network. In my case, then, the situated dynamics can be thought of as visually practiced and realised through age/ing bodies in graphic environments. In bringing together contextual and cognitive approaches to comic narratology and linking them with age/ing studies, I aim to further diversify comics narratology as well as contribute to a more conceptual phase in age/ing studies scholarship (Barry and Skagen 2020).