This award of up to $2500 supports a researcher who needs to travel to Columbus, OH to use the collections of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. The award may be used to defray travel expenses, living expenses in Columbus or research costs.
Eligibility
The award is open to non-Ohio State graduate students, faculty and independent scholars (including scholars with or without advanced degrees or without institutional affiliations) who are at least 18 years old and live more than 60 miles from The Ohio State University’s Columbus campus. Both foreign and domestic applicants are invited to apply.
Criteria
Applications will be evaluated based on the originality and significance of the research topic, the potential of the project to contribute to new scholarship or creative works, the relevance of the collection materials to the project and evidence of the need to use the materials onsite. We encourage applicants from all disciplines who are using cartoons or comics in their research projects. Our holdings of books, serials, original art and archival collections can be searched on our website.
About the Award
This award was made possible by a generous gift from the Will and Ann Eisner Family Foundation, which was matched by many additional donors to create the Lucy Shelton Caswell Research Award Endowment. Will Eisner was a major cartoonist, writer, educator and entrepreneur. He was one of the earliest cartoonists to work in the American comic book industry, and his series, The Spirit (1940–1952), was noted for its experiments in content and form. In 1978, he popularized the term “graphic novel” with the publication of his book A Contract With God. He was an early contributor to formal comics studies with his book Comics and Sequential Art (1985). The Eisner Family Foundation continues his support of the cartoon arts. The Will Eisner Seminar Room in the BICLM was named in honor of the late cartoonist.
The award is named for the founding curator of the BICLM, Professor Emerita Lucy Shelton Caswell. Prior to her retirement, her scholarly work and teaching focused on the history of newspaper comic strips and the history of American editorial cartoons. She has curated more than seventy-five cartoon-related exhibits and is the author of several articles and books, the most recent being the revised edition of Billy Ireland. Caswell is co-editor of The Ohio State University Press Studies in Cartoons and Comics series. She also serves as the vice president of Cartoon Crossroads Columbus (CXC), the annual citywide celebration of cartoon art.
How to Apply
Submit the following application materials to cartoons@osu.edu :
- A statement not to exceed two pages describing your research project, the relevance of the collections of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum to that project, the amount of time you think you need to complete your research at the BICLM and the expected outcome of the research.
- A summary curriculum vitae/resume not to exceed three pages including name, title, education and contact information.
- One letter of recommendation. The letter may be sent separately from the other materials, but applicants need to include the name, e-mail address and relationship of the person writing the letter for the applicant.
APPLICATION DEADLINE:
Deadline for applications is November 30, 2022.
To be considered, all applications must be received by the stated deadline.
ANNOUNCEMENT OF DECISIONS:
A committee appointed by the curator will review the applications and select the award recipient. One award will be given in this round. Decisions will be emailed to applicants by January 31, 2023. Queries about applications in process cannot be acknowledged. The award recipient and their research project will be recognized in Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum and University Libraries’ publicity.
GUIDELINES:
- All communication regarding the award should be submitted to cartoons@osu.edu.
- Timing of the research visit will be mutually arranged, but must take place within the 12 months of the fiscal year following the successful notification of the award.
- Recipient will meet with the curator to agree on final research product and date of completion during the research visit. Details of this agreement must be submitted prior to the end of the research visit.
- Recipient of the 2023 award must complete their research by June 30, 2024.
- Recipient will share their work with the university community through an open presentation, blog post or other appropriate means by June 30, 2024.
- Recipient will provide a brief statement or report describing research visit and summarizing the results of their research by July 31, 2024.
- Products of research must acknowledge the Lucy Shelton Caswell Research Award, give credit to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum. The researcher will submit a copy of any publication resulting from or informed by research to the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum by June 30, 2024.
APPLICATION AND AWARD TIMELINE:
- November 30, 2022: Deadline for all applications; must be received or postmarked by this date
- January 31, 2023: Recipient will be notified
- February 28, 2023: Recipient must complete paperwork that will enable payment
- July 1, 2023: Recipient may begin making research visits
- June 30, 2024: Recipients must complete their onsite research visits and knowledge sharing with the university by this date
- July 31, 2024: Deadline to submit a brief statement or report describing research visit and summarizing results of research visit.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
Email cartoons@osu.edu
Previous Award Winners
2022 Lucy Shelton Caswell Award Recipients: Adrienne Resha and Eike Exner
- Adrienne Resha is a Ph.D. student at the College of William and Mary. She will be researching race, color and printing technology, combining “color theory and critical race theory to articulate a critical color theory in original comic books” for her dissertation, From Superman to Sana Amanat: Alienation, Assimilation, and American Superhero Comics, 1938 to Present. Her time at BICLM will be used to closely study original printings of Silver, Bronze and modern age comics – with a special focus on Green Lantern comics and the character John Stewart, to “observe how race was produced in mainstream comics before digital coloring became the industry norm in the 1980s.”
- Eike Exner received his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California and is now an independent scholar. His revised dissertation, Comics and the Origins of Manga, was recently published by Rutgers University Press. He will be researching representations of women in pre-war manga for a book chapter in an anthology on women and manga and for a book-length history of modern manga. Exner wrote, “Though the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum also holds an impressive collection of post-war manga, its pre-war manga collection is unparalleled in the United States (perhaps even outside of Japan generally) and the pre-war publications are significantly more difficult to find and access.”
2020 Lucy Shelton Caswell Award Recipient:
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Kevin Cooley, Master of Arts in English Literature from St. Bonaventure University, and currently completing his Doctorate in English Literature from University of Florida. Cooley will utilize the research award in support of two related projects. First, in support of his dissertation and monograph Queer Beyond Here: Animated Sex and How To Get Used To It, which Cooley states “chronicles the development of queer animation from the earliest moving image devices to contemporary cartoons like Steven Universe.” In order to do justice to this lineage, Cooley “found it crucial to investigate the queer energies (and sometimes characters) of the formative comic strips that inspired early animation.” During a research visit to The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum in the summer of 2019, Cooley found that George O. Frink’s strips Circus Solly, Slim Jim and the Force and The Picture Show revealed “obvious influences on the chase scenes of Warner Bros. animation (impossible physics, drag performances, and all).” This has led him on an exhaustive pursuit of Frink, including a visit to the Elgin Mental Health Hospital, the contemporary site of the asylum in which Frink was institutionalized and where he died. As a result, the second project that the award will support will be an article and monograph about Frink’s life, tentatively titled Acrobats, Asylums, and Would-Be Animators: The Surprisingly Queer Stories of George O. Frink, the Forgotten Cartoonist. Cooley will utilize the San Francisco Academy of Comic Art Collection to conduct close readings of Frink’s strips The Awful Bore, The Goat Family, Mister Mainbrake, Mrs. Clubberly Clubber, Tommy Town, and Ratty and Algy, as well as those of his contemporaries at the Chicago Daily News.
2019 Lucy Shelton Caswell Award Recipient:
- Dr. Susan Kirtley, Professor of English at Portland State University and Director of Comic Studies. She holds a Ph.D. in English from University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her project is entitled “A Woman’s Place: The Rhetoric of Domesticity in Female-Created Comic Strips from 1976-2012.” Kirtley’s research will focus on feminism and feminist history through the lens of the following comic strips: Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse, Lynda Barry’s strip Ernie Pook’s Comeek, Cathy Guisewite’s Cathy, Nicole Hollander’s Sylvia and Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For. Her research will focus on “defining and exploring the ramifications of this multifarious expression of women’s roles at a time of great change in history and in comic art.” Kirtley’s research will culminate in a book, currently under contract with The Ohio State University Press.
2018 Lucy Shelton Caswell Award Recipients:
- Dr. Daniel Worden, Visiting Assistant Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology’ School of Individualized Study. He holds a Ph.D. in English and American Literature from Brandeis University. His project is entitled “Oil Comics: Iconographies of Energy, Environment and Motion.” Worden’s research aims to chronicle the imbrication of comics with the oil industry and the normalized use of petroleum as a fuel source, from the late 19th century to the present.
- Xavier Dapena, Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. His project is called “’They do not represent us’: Radical Imageries of Contemporary Spanish Graphic Narratives (1973-2011).” Dapena’s project centers on the intersection of graphic narratives and political imagination and seeks to understand how the political repertoire of images, symbols, and metaphors express three processes: memorialization, precarization, and legitimation.
- Frank Santoro, creator of Pompeii, Storeyville and other comics. He is also an educator who runs ComicsWorkbook, a training and residency program for cartoonists. His research on “The Ohio School of Naturalist Cartooning” will look at how Billy Ireland’s influence on Edwina Dumm, Noel Sickles, Milton Caniff, and C.N. Landon informed a language of 20th century cartooning that has carried on into the 21stcentury.