Theresa Tensuan

Biography

I work in the ever expanding field of contemporary American literature: in my scholarship and my teaching, I focus on autobiography, visual culture studies, critical discourses concerning gender and race, and the interrelation between cultural production and social justice. Following a sabbatical year in which I concentrated on visual culture studies, supported by a Rockefeller fellowship and a Penn Humanities Center fellowship, I started a new project on comic books and the art of social transformation that I was able to foster in the context of a 2008-2009 Hurford Humanities Center Faculty Seminar on "The Illustrated Book";  a highlight of this work has been the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues Maud McInerney, and Deborah Roberts, Mellon Post-doctoral fellow Rachel Orberter, and Jacob Carroll '09 in curating the exhibit "Visual and Textual Technologies: The Illustrated Book" that was shown in the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery last spring.  Based on this work, I'm teaching a new seminar this fall entitled "Drawing the Line: Comics and the Art of Social Transformation" that is an anchor for a symposium that will take place on Haverford's campus from October 21-25 that will bring together cartoonists Lynda Barry, Eric Drooker, and John Jennings with cultural critics Jeet Heer, Jared Gardner, and Sharon Mizota (you can see the full schedule at www.haverford.edu/drawingtheline;  the live link is at the bottom of the page).

My work with Haverford and Bryn Mawr students in the classroom has helped me to articulate and refine the central concerns of my scholarship, and I think of my teaching and mentoring in part as an investment in the ongoing constitution of a vibrant intellectual community here at Haverford. In the contexts of classes such as English 286: "Arts of the Possible: Cultures of Social Justice Movements" and English 278: "Contemporary Women Writers" students have had the opportunity to work with visiting artists such as filmmaker Shanti Thakur, folksingers Charlie King and Karen Brandow, and poet Cherrìe Moraga, and photographer/installation artist Pato Hebert.

Education

B.A., Haverford College

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley

Research

I am currently working on a book entitled Breaking the Frame: Comics and the art of social transformation which focuses on the work of artists such as David B., Lynda Barry, Jaime Cortez, Phoebe Gloeckner, and Joe Sacco whose work literally as well as figuratively reframes social conventions and political ideologies.

My recent publications include:

"Crossing the Lines: Graphic (Life) Narratives and Co-laborative Political Transformations." Biography 32.1 (Winter 2009) 173-189.

"Comic Visions and Revisions in the work of Lynda Barry and Marjane Satrapi." MFS 52.4 (Winter 2006) 173-189.

“Talking-story: Rearticulating Identity, Recasting Canons, and Rereading Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior:” National, Communal, and Personal Voices in Asian America and the Asian Diaspora, edited by Elisabetta Marino and Begonia Simal-Gonzalez (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2005) 25-41.

Courses: Fall 2009, Haverford

Courses: Spring 2010, Haverford