BOARD MEMBERS
Maaheen Ahmed
University of Ghent
Maaheen Ahmed is associate professor of comparative literature at Ghent University, Belgium. She obtained her PhD (with distinction) from Jacobs University Bremen, Germany in 2011 with a dissertation on manifestations of the graphic novel across different cultural and linguistic spheres. Since then, she has held postdoctoral positions at the Université catholique de Louvain (Marie Curie co-fund program) and Ghent University (Research Foundation-Flanders).
Most of her research and publications focus on contemporary, alternative graphic novels and comics in English and in French. She has written and presented on superheroes, autobiographical comics, romantic tropes and monsters in contemporary graphic novels, the representation of war in comics, children in comics, comics memories, intermediality and, most recently, children’s comics magazines.
“Star maps of broken capillaries”
This opening line of Monica Youn’s Krazy Kat inspired poem “Ignatz Aubade” neatly sums up my fascination for comics studies and all the work that still needs to be done on comics.
C-S Publications
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Popular Culture.” The Edinburgh Companion to First World War Periodicals, edited by Marysa Demoor et al., Edinburgh University Press, 2023, pp. 95–112.
Ahmed, Maaheen, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Comics. 2023.
Round, Julia, Rikke P. Cortsen and Maaheen Ahmed. Comics and Graphic Novels. Bloomsbury Academic, 2022.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Closure ; Gaze ; Childishness.” Key Terms in Comics Studies, edited by Erin La Cour et al., Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Reading Comics with Aby Warburg : Collaging Memories.” Seeing Comics through Art History : Alternative Approaches to the Form, edited by Maggie Gray and Ian Horton, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022, pp. 53–71, doi:10.1007/978-3-030-93507-8_4.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Reading Children in Comics : A Sociohistorical Mapping.” CHILDRENS GEOGRAPHIES, vol. 20, no. 3, 2022, pp. 349–60, doi:10.1080/14733285.2021.1919996.
Ahmed, Maaheen, and Shiamin Kwa. “ ‘Kill the Monster!’ : My Favorite Thing Is Monsters and the Big, Ambitious (Graphic) Novel.” GENRE (NORMAN, OKLA.), vol. 54, no. 1, 2021, pp. 17–42, doi:10.1215/00166928-8911485.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Loving Comics in Neil the Horse Comics and Stories.” COMICALITÉS, 2021, pp. 1–19.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Neil the Horse and Suppressed Comics Memory : Dolls, Funny Animals, and Entertainment Work.” The Other 1980s : Reframing Comics’ Crucial Decade, edited by Brannon Costello and Brian Cremins, Louisiana State University Press, 2021, pp. 53–69.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “The Alain Van Passen Collection : At the Crossroads of Comics Collecting and Critique.” INKS, vol. 4, no. 2, 2020, pp. 221–36, doi:10.1353/ink.2020.0013.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “The Edge of Comics : Felipe Muhr’s Blindsight : Excavations into Comics and Vision.” Post-Comics : Beyond Comics, Illustration and the Graphic Novel, edited by Sébastien Conard, KASK School of Arts & Het Balanseer, 2020, pp. 15–27.
Ahmed, Maaheen, and Benoît Glaude. “Les Aventures de Tintin Dans La Littérature Américaine (Frederic Tuten et Alexander Irvine).” Les Novellisations Pour La Jeunesse : Nouvelles Perspectives Transmédiatiques Sur Le Roman Pour La Jeunesse, edited by Laurent Déom and Benoît Glaude, vol. 9, Academia-L’Harmattan, 2020, pp. 301–24.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Black Boys and Black Girls in Comics : An Affective and Historical Mapping of Intertwined Stereotypes.” Routledge Companion to Gender and Sexuality in Comic Book Studies, edited by Frederick Adalma, Routledge, 2020, pp. 28–41, doi:10.4324/9780429264276-4.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Children in Graphic Novels : Intermedial Encounters and Mnemonic Layers.” ETUDES FRANCOPHONES, vol. 32, 2020, pp. 129–48.
Ahmed, Maaheen. Monstrous Imaginaries : The Legacy of Romanticism in Comics. University Press of Mississippi, 2020.
Ahmed, Maaheen, editor. Strong Bonds : Child-Animal Relationships in Comics. Vol. 6, Presses Universitaires de Liège, 2020.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Children in Comics : Between Education and Entertainment, Conformity and Agency.” The Oxford Handbook of Comic Book Studies, edited by Frederick Luis Aldama, Oxford University Press, 2019, pp. 1–19, doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190917944.013.27.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Instrumentalising Media Memories : The Second World War According to Achtung Zelig!” EUROPEAN COMIC ART, vol. 12, no. 1, 2019, pp. 1–20, doi:10.3167/eca.2019.120102.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Pratt et (A Suivre) : Plus Qu’une Alliance Des Esprits ‘Littéraires.’” (A Suivre) Archives d’une Revue Culte, edited by Sylvain Lesage and Meesters Gert, Presses Universitaires François-Rabelais, 2018, pp. 229–53.
Ahmed, Maaheen, and Benoit Crucifix, editors. Comics Memory : Archives and Styles. Palgrave Macmillan, 2018, doi:10.1007/978-3-319-91746-7.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “Achtung Zelig! : Deux Monstres et Un Clown Au Carrefour de l’histoire et de La Mémoire Médiatique.” CAHIERS ERTA, vol. 12, 2017, pp. 29–48, doi:DOI 10.4467/23538953CE.17.023.7969.
Ahmed, Maaheen, and Martin Lund. “‘We’re All Avengers Now’ : Community-Building, Civil Religion and Nominal Multiculturalism in Marvel Comics’ Fear Itself.” EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF AMERICAN CULTURE, vol. 35, no. 2, Intellect, 2016, pp. 77–95, doi:10.1386/ejac.35.2.77_1.
Ahmed, Maaheen. Openness of Comics : Generating Meaning within Flexible Structures. University Press of Mississippi, 2016.
Ahmed, Maaheen, Kees Ribbens and Martin Lund, editors. “European Comic Art: The Great War in Comics.” European Comic Art, vol. 8 (2), Berghahn, 2015.
Ahmed, Maaheen. “State Protection and Identification in Hellboy: Of Reformed Devils and Other Others in the Pentagon.” EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF AMERICAN STUDIES, edited by Michael J. Prince, vol. 10, no. 2, 2015.
Into C-S
Principal Investigator of the multi-researcher project Children in Comics: An Intercultural History from 1865, funded by an ERC Starting Grant from 2018 to 2024 (grant no. XXX)
comics.ugent.be
In addition to numerous publications, communication and exchange initiative, the grant also helped Ghent University acquire the Alain Van Passen collection of comics magazines.
ICLA Research Commitee on Comics Studies and Graphic Narrative (2024)
