Abstract

This thesis examines a unique niche of North American art: autobiographical comics by Jewish women. From the perspective of memory studies, the main goal of this research is to present a framework for analyzing graphic novels. Artists Miriam Katin, Bernice Eisenstein, and Miriam Libicki present the spectator/reader with distinct and widely varying possibilities for the graphic medium with their memoirs, We Are on Our Own, I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, and Jobnik! An American Girl’s Adventure’s in the Israeli Army, respectively. Several avenues are explored in relation to these works, including the question of how memory is visualized through text and image, trauma and fragmentation, issues of self-representation, narrativity, and time. At a deeper level, there is also a consideration of the diverse roles and meanings of remembrances in the visual arts. The purpose of this research is not to create an overarching statement about comic books or memory, but rather to unravel their immense complexity and richness using theories from a wide range of disciplines, including memory studies, narratology, Jewish cultural studies, feminist studies, and oral history.