Get involved with the Graphic History Project

Download information as a PDF here: GHP Callout Fall 2012

Illustrate! Educate! Organize!

Get involved with the Graphic History Project

Paul Buhle and the Graphic History Collective are calling for activists, artists, academics, and designers to participate in the Graphic History Project, a project about graphic activism. Our intention is to produce new politically relevant graphic histories to help inspire resistance and action. 

To get a sense of what we are looking for and hoping to encourage on a mass scale please see the first flagship project: a graphic history of the 1936 Flint auto occupations by Ethan Heitner and edited by Paul Buhle. http://www.dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=630. This “comic” masterfully mixes history, art, and radical politics with an eye to inspiring present day struggles informed by the past.

Graphic novels are fast becoming a popular and accessible tool of activism in the 21^st century. From Persepolis (Paris 2000), Wobblies: A Graphic History of the Industrial Workers of the World (New York 2005), and A Dangerous Woman: A Graphic Biography of Emma Goldman (New York 2008) to A People’s History of American Empire (New York 2008), Pour en Finir Avec Novembre(Montréal 2011), The Anti-Capitalist Comic Book (Vancouver 2012), and May Day: A Graphic History of Protest (Toronto 2012), it is clear that graphic novels are bringing our radical past to life in new and exciting ways.

How can you get involved? 

Our vision is to collect, on a volunteer basis, a number of short—10 pages max—graphic histories of resistance that illuminate the various ways peoples from a diversity of backgrounds and experiences have fought for economic and social justice around the world. From organizing unions and waging militant strikes to forming women’s and queer caucus and erecting barricades on indigenous reserves/reservations to block gas oil pipelines, we would like to highlight peoples important stories of struggle throughout history. Ideally, graphic histories will be made available together online for free in a series or, depending on final submission, collected, edited, and published with a progressive press. To get a sense of what is out there currently that we would want to build on and add a historical element to, is the Cartoon Movement’s comic section: http://www.cartoonmovement.com/comic.

What is the next step?

To get involved with what we are loosely calling the “Graphic History Project” please email graphichistorycollective@gmail.com indicating the skills you are willing to bring to the project and provide a sample of your work (if relevant), along with an overview of your ideas and how they fit into the project.

We are looking for pitches or ideas by 21 November 2012. Projects do not have to be completed until 2013.

There are multiple ways of participating:

Authors: If you are an author with an idea, please also make a formal proposal outlining your idea for a (roughly 10 page) political graphic history.

Illustrators: please indicate if you are an illustrator wanting to be paired up with an author. 

Illustrating/writing teams: If you are part of an illustrating/writing team (or do both tasks on your own), we ask that you make a formal submission including a sample of your work and a short outline of your proposed 10 page graphic history, specifying its political message and relevance.

Communications: If you are a graphic designer or are offering up web and communications skills to help polish and promote our work please let us know.

We want to start our work quickly, so the deadline for submissions will be 21 November 2012 with an intended completion date for all pieces by 1 September 2013.

In love and solidarity!

More info:

For more about Paul Buhle see: http://brown.edu/Departments/AmCiv/people/facultypage.php?id=10137

To see some of Paul Bulhle’s graphic history projects see: http://www.amazon.com/A-Peoples-History-American-Empire/dp/0805087443