Recent ucmercedcenterforthehumanities_comics items

The Sad Citizen

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This comic is based on the book The Sad Citizen: How Politics Is Depressing and Why It Matters. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2025, by Christopher Ojeda.

Painting the Empire with Feathers

Wed, 5 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This comic is based on research presented in the article "Isotopic Analysis of Feathered Panels from the Southern Peruvian Desert Demonstrates Earliest Amazonian Feather Trade by Middle Horizon (600 – 1000 CE)," by Scaffidi et al.

The Legacy of Black Women Filmmakers

Tue, 28 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This comic is inspired by Christina Baker’s book Black Women Directors (Rutgers University Press, 2022).

The Politics of Pain

Thu, 1 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This comic illustrates how individual health can shape political thought and action. It examines how a chance decline in health can shape an individual’s perception of the world around them and in turn shape their political attitudes and behaviors.

It is based on the following peer-reviewed article: Kavanagh, NM, Menon, A, Heinze JE. Does Health Vulnerability Predict Voting for Right-Wing Populist Parties in Europe? American Political Science Review. 2021;115(3):1104-1109. doi:10.1017/S0003055421000265. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/does-health-vulnerability-predict-voting-for-rightwing-populist-parties-in-europe/615657F29EA282F64F0B01B6265F8E10

Acquiring Tastes

Tue, 29 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This is a one-page comic adaptation of a 2018 article, "Acquired Tastes: Urban Impactson Jeju Shamanic Ritual." The article, originally published in the December 2018 volume of The Review of Korean Studies, and the Bobcat Comics adaptation focuses on a phenomenon in shamanism in Jeju Island, South Korea in which offering goods increasingly feature cosmopolitan insertions. While the findings confirm longstanding observations that Jeju's indigenous shamanism is on the decline, the research also emphasizes that shamanic practices still maintain surprising vitality as they adapt newer forms of offering goods and ritual formats.

GUARDIANS of the HORIZON

Fri, 25 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This comic is based on the article "Evaluating settlement defensibility during the Late Classic: A geospatial approach to the study of conflict in ancient Aguascalientes, Mexico," by Manuel de Jesús Dueñas-García, Miriam Selene Campos-Martínez, and Nicola Lercari, published in the Journal of Conflict Archaeology, vol. 17, no. 2, 2022, pp. 155-183. https://doi.org/10.1080/15740773.2022.2124143.

The study of conflict and warfare in the Northern Frontier of Mesoamerica during the Late Classic period (500–900 CE) has long been shaped by colonial narratives and incomplete archaeological records. This article introduces a novel geospatial analytical framework to better understand conflict in ancient West Mexico. We present the results of a UAV-based aerial survey at Cerro de en medio, Aguascalientes, and, using GIS methodologies, analyze the site's defensiveness and the spectrum of conflict, ranging from sporadic...

What We Can Learn from Black Women's Theatre

Tue, 24 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This comic is based on Nicosia Shakes's book, Women's Activist Theatre in Jamaica and South Africa: Gender, Race, and Performance Space (University of Illinois Press, 2023).

Disinvestment and Carceral Investment in Black Neighborhoods

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This comic is based on the research in the book Before Gentrification: The Creation of DC’s Racial Wealth Gap, published by the University of California Press (2024).

This book shows how a century of redlining, disinvestment, and the War on Drugs wreaked devastation on Black people and paved the way for gentrification in Washington, DC. In Before Gentrification, Tanya Golash-Boza tracks the cycles of state abandonment and punishment that have shaped the city, revealing how policies and policing work to displace and decimate the Black middle class.

Shakespeare as Environmental Writer

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Shakespeare's writing responded to ecological problems in his own time. Today, we can adapt his works to speak to the urgent environmental crises facing our communities, as the group Shakespeare in Yosemite does every spring.

Based on the final chapter of Katherine Steele Brokaw's Shakespeare and Community Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023) and “Shakespeare and Environmental Justice: Collaborative Eco-Theatre in YosemiteNational Park and the San Joaquin Valley.” In Situating Shakespeare Pedagogy in US Higher Education: Social Justice and Institutional Contexts. Edited by Marissa Greenberg and Elizabeth Williamson (Edinburgh University Press, 2024). Also based on the work of Shakespeare in Yosemite, https://yosemiteshakes.ucmerced.edu.

Are Older LGBT Adults Falling Behind on Vaccinations?

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This comic shows how sexual orientation and gender identity shape the uptake of influenza, shingles, and pneumococcal vaccines among U.S. older adults.

It is based on resesarch from: Polonijo, Andrea N., and Eric M. Vogelsang. "Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Differences in Influenza, Shingles, and Pneumococcal Vaccination Among U.S. Older Adults." LGBT Health, vol. 10, no. 2, 2023, pp. 138-147.

Empowering Non-native English Speaking Students at UC Merced

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Empowering Non-native English Speaking Students at UC Merced

Exclusión de los latinos durante la pandemia de COVID-19

Mon, 23 Oct 2023 00:00:00 +0000

Exclusión de los latinos durante la pandemia de COVID-19

No Es una Lucha Contra el Cáncer: Las Metáforas de las Latinas en sus Narrativas del Cáncer de Seno