Sketch that story and make it popular
About the project
Fostered by global and local feminist movements, the international discourse on gender-based violence (GBV) has reached significant popularity since the first decade of the new millennium (Romito 2005). Notwithstanding the laudable visibility achieved, this mainstreaming has resulted in representations that have often confirmed, instead of questioning, gender stereotypes (Williamson, Mandolini 2017).
In light of this situation, activists, artists and artivists have produced a variety of responses that have challenged the simplistic portrayal of sexist abuse conveyed by mainstream journalistic discourse. Among these, graphic novels on the topic have been published in recent years and feminist collectives have frequently used graphic narratives (GNs) – in particular, superhero comics – for their awareness-raising campaigns against GBV.
In a global context where activists’ goals are mainly discursive (Jenkins et al. 2016) and where storytelling is a strategy commonly employed in feminist counter-discourse construction (Guaraldo 2013), an investigation on the use of GNs to portray sexist abuse is necessary in order to fully understand the potentials of GBV-related social movements practices. However, no systematic research on the topic of GNs against GBV has been carried out so far.
This research project aims at investigating the role played by graphic narratives in the popularisation of feminist stances on gendered abuse in Italy and in the Lusophone world. The project, funded by the FCT (Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia), is built around the hypothesis that graphic novels and comics represent a crucial resource in the area of art-activism against sexist violence, given their ability to use the cross-discursive system of words and images to convey complex narrative structures while, at the same time, remaining accessible to a wide audience.
About me
Nicoletta Mandolini is a researcher in the area of Cultural and Media Studies. Her main research interest is the study of representations of gender violence and other forms of gender-based discrimination. She is currently FCT Researcher at CECS - Universidade do Minho, where she is working on the project Sketch Her Story and Make It Popular: Using Graphic Narratives in Lusophone and Italian Feminist Activism against Gender Violence (www.sketchthatstory.com). She previously worked as an FWO postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven (Belgium). She owns a PhD from University College Cork (Ireland). Her doctoral project, funded by the IRC (Irish Research Council), focussed on the analysis of journalistic and literary portrayal of femicide in the Italian context and it resulted in the publication of the monograph Representations of Lethal Gender-Based Violence in Italy between Journalism and Literature: Femminicidio Narratives (Routledge 2021). She has published her research findings in top-ranked international journals in the area of Modern Languages, Italian, Gender, Comics and Communication Studies (e.g. Romance Studies; Italian Studies; The Italianist; Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies; gender/sexuality/italy; Feminist Encounters; Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics; European Comic Art; Problemi dell'informazione, Communication and Society). She authored chapters in edited volumes published for Routledge and Palgrave McMillan and she co-edited the volumes Representing Gender-Based Violence. Global Perspectives (Palgrave 2023) and Rappresentare la violenza di genere. Sguardi femministi tra critica, attivismo e scrittura (Mimesis 2018). She is a member of the CASILAC research cluster on Violence, Conflict and Gender, which she co-convened from 2016 to 2019 and she is a founding member of the research group on Italian comics SnIF - Studying'n'Investigating Fumetti (www.grupposnif.it).
https://www.cienciavitae.pt//pt/451F-404A-E9ED