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
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

After the Future: Heat, Collapse, and Exhausting the “Future of Work”

Dr Luke Munn

Friday, 25 August
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Promoting children’s environmental responsibility in the EFL classroomDr Valentina Adami

Friday, 1 September
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Write FOR your reader vs. writing WITH your reader: human-centred design in professional communication

and

Portraying Asian-diasporic identity beyond the limits of the literary label Asian-Australian

Catriona Arthy

and

Olivia De Zilva

Friday, 8 September
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Exploring Digital Humanities through the Lens of Journalism: A Case Study of Reader Comment Analysis

Dr Lujain Shafeeq

Friday, 15 September
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

The Medicalised Body - On Illness, Humour, and Sexuality

and

Talkin about the thing that stops me writing about the thing Im talkin about: Hacking and Hofstadter on the looping effect of diagnostic labels and writing the strange double

Carly-Jay Metcalfe and Bianca Millroy

Friday, 22 September
12-1pm

Hybrid: Online via Zoom and in person at the
SCA Writer's Studio
(Level 6, Michie)

Coping with eco-anxiety: A guided journal trialDr Ans Vercammen and Dr Skye Doherty

 

Venue

Room: 
Michie Building, Room 601