The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum (BICLM) is pleased to announce the winners of the annual Lucy Shelton Caswell Research Award for 2024. The award is named for Professor Emerita Lucy Shelton Caswell, the founding curator of BICLM, and provides $2500 to support researchers who need to travel to Columbus, Ohio to use the BICLM collections materials on site. We were delighted to receive a robust and diverse range of proposals from both national and international scholars and artists. A panel of reviewers from a variety of disciplines at Ohio State was appointed to assess the proposals.
The recipients for 2024 are Dr. Safiyya Hosein and Dr. Jonathan Najarian.
Dr. Safiyya Hosein
Dr. Safiyya Hosein is a lecturer at Toronto Metropolitan University and holds a PhD in Communication and Culture. Her research focuses on Muslim superheroes, Muslim audiences, and Muslim fandoms. Hosein has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as the Popular Culture Studies Journal, Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics, and The Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, as well as in the popular press such as The Conversation, the CBC, Spice Radio, the National Post, and in many international media outlets. As a comics writer, her work appears in The Nib and several comics anthologies. In 2017, she was selected by Vice Media Motherboard for their “Humans of the Year” series. Hosein will utilize the Milestone Comics Collection at the Billy Ireland Library and Cartoon Museum to examine the representations of the pioneering Black Muslim superhero, Wise Son, for her upcoming book on Muslim superheroes.
Dr. Jonathan Najarian
Dr. Jonathan Najarian is Visiting Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at Colgate University. He is the editor of Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture (University Press of Mississippi, 2024), and is currently at work on a book on early American newspaper comics. Some recently published essays include Crazy Quilt, Advertising, and the Chicago Tribune as well as ‘And words were images to him’: Narrative Remediation in Rockwell Kent. Najarian will use his time at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum to support research for his current book project Immediate Fantasies: Comics in Context, 1890-1940. This monograph will explore materiality in newspaper comics in the United States: their leap from the page to billboards and merchandise, the stage and screen, fashion, etcetera—in addition to the cultural imaginary they inhabit.
Congratulations Safiyya and Jonathan!
The application process for the 2025 award will take place in late Fall 2024.
Ongoing support of 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 an endowment. The endowment provides funding for one award to be given each year. Past awardees include Dr. Margaret Galvan, Dr. Christina M. Knopf, Dan Yezbick, Adrienne Resha, Eike Exner, Kevin Cooley, Dr. Susan Kirtley, Dr. Daniel Worden, Xavier Dapena and Frank Santoro.
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