The graphic journalist Joe Sacco is a familiar figure – we have followed him into the streets of Goražde in the course of the Bosnian war in Safe Area Goražde (2000) and into the Occupied Territories in Palestine (2001). It is a little known biographical fact that Joe Sacco grew up in Melbourne. His family migrated from Malta when he was 1, and remained here until 1972, when they moved to Los Angeles and the more familiar ‘author bio’ begins there, in the United States, when Joe began his journalism career working on the High School newspaper in Beaverton, Oregon. This is, for example, the beginning of the story in the bionote provided by his publisher Fantagraphics (https://fantagraphics.com/flog/artist-bio-joe-sacco/).
This is not a hidden story so much as an irrelevant one. But when does this biography become relevant? When does Joe Sacco draw his Australian story into his graphics journalism, and why?
Bio note
Gillian Whitlock is a professor of English at the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. Her most recent book is Postcolonial Life Narratives: Testimonial Transactions (Oxford 2015) and she is currently writing The Testimony of Things, a study of the asylum seekers held on Nauru 2000-5, based on testimonial artefacts at the Fryer Library.
About Research Seminar and Workshop Series
School of Communication and Arts Research Seminar Series
The research seminar and workshop series occur each semester, each with a different topic and guest speaker from UQ or otherwise.
Friday, 4 August Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | After the Future: Heat, Collapse, and Exhausting the “Future of Work” | Dr Luke Munn |
Friday, 25 August Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | Promoting children’s environmental responsibility in the EFL classroom | Dr Valentina Adami |
Friday, 1 September Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | Portraying Asian-diasporic identity beyond the limits of the literary label Asian-Australian | Catriona Arthy and Olivia De Zilva |
Friday, 8 September Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | Exploring Digital Humanities through the Lens of Journalism: A Case Study of Reader Comment Analysis | Dr Lujain Shafeeq |
Friday, 15 September Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | Carly-Jay Metcalfe and Bianca Millroy | |
Friday, 22 September Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the | Coping with eco-anxiety: A guided journal trial | Dr Ans Vercammen and Dr Skye Doherty |