Jim Crow and the Holocaust in Comics CFP

In the midst of Russia invading Ukraine, I planned a study travel trip to Poland focused on the intersections between Jim Crow and the Holocaust. The trip, for various reasons, didn’t materialize because we did not have enough students sign up. We started seeking students before the invasion, and we had trouble getting students interested. Part of this, I think, came from the heaviness of the subject and the places we intended to visit, notably Auschwitz and Treblinka. I understand that trepidation, and I knew that even I would have to prepare myself for being in those spaces.

While the course failed to make, one student wanted to still take the course, even though we couldn’t go to Poland. So, we did a directed study which led to the Jim Crow and the Holocaust syllabus. For this course, I wanted us to use historical texts as we looked at graphic novels about Jim Crow and the Holocaust. Only one of those texts, Robert Morales and Kyle Baker’s Truth: Red, White, and Black, present direct correlations between Jim Crow and the Holocaust. Others, such as Mat Johnson and Warren Pleece’s Incognegro of Art Spiegelman’s Maus focus on one of the other, but through primary texts such as the We Charge Genocide or works by Lillian Smith, Robert Paxton, and others, the connections emerged and the graphic novels provided a lens to dive deeper into our understanding of these…