Drawing (in) the Feminine celebrates and examines the richness of contemporary women’s production in French and Francophone comics art and considers the history of representations made by both dominant and marginalized creators. Bridging historical and contemporary comics output, these essays illuminate the interfaces among genre, gender, and cultural history. Contributors from both sides of the Atlantic, and across a variety of methodologies and disciplinary orientations, challenge prevailing claims about the absence of women creators, characters, and readers in bande dessinée, arguing that women have always been part of its history. While still far from achieving parity with their male counterparts, female creators are occupying an increasingly significant portion of the French-language comics publishing industry, and creators of all genders are putting forth stories that reflect on the diversity and richness of women’s and gender-nonconforming people’s experiences. In the essays collected here, contributors push back against the ways in which the marginalization of women within bande dessinée history has overshadowed their significant contributions, extending avenues for further exploring the true diversity of a flourishing contemporary production. 

Contributors:  
Armelle Blin-Rolland, Véronique Bragard, Michelle Bumatay, Benoît Crucifix, Isabelle Delorme, Jacques Dürrenmatt, Margaret C. Flinn, Alexandra Gueydan-Turek, Jennifer Howell, Jessica Kohn, Sylvain Lesage, Catriona MacLeod, Mark McKinney 

Part 1              Industry, Audience, and Platforms

Chapter 1        Women Cartoonists: A New Avenue for Understanding a Little-Known Profession?
Chapter 2        Women in Color: Comics Artists and the Ninth Art in France
Chapter 3        Between Ah! Nana and Okapi: Nicole Claveloux at the Crossroads
Chapter 4        Gender Equality? Hshouma! Women, Sexuality, and Comics Activism in Morocco

Part 2              Geographies of Identity

Chapter 5        Graphic Entanglements: Images of Women, Nature, and Brittany in Contemporary Comics
Chapter 6        The Feminine Plural in Africa and the Diaspora: Quartets of Women in Aya de Yopougon and La vie d’Ebène Duta
Chapter 7        Revolutionary Comics: Samandal’s Feminist Topography of Resistance
Chapter 8        Unveiling IVG: Representations of Women’s Experiences of Abortion in the Bande Dessinée

Part 3             Representations and History (Herstories)

Chapter 9        The Face of Women in Early Bandes Dessinées: Töpffer, Cham, Musset, Gustave Doré
Chapter 10      The Amazons of Dahomey in French and African Comics
Chapter 11      Catel: Portrait of the Twenty-First-Century Feminist Artist and Author of Drawn Biography
Chapter 12      The Women behind the Woman behind the Man: Women Drawing Plural Collective Voices onto the Page in Emilie Plateau’s Noire