Comics As a Tool for Research on Gender Violence. Interview With Nayanika Mookherjee on the Graphic Novel Birangona. Towards Ethical Testimonies of Sexual Violence During Conflict (2019)

Nicoletta Mandolini; Nayanika  Mookherjee

doi:10.21814/vista.4109

Authors

Nicoletta Mandolini Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Sociedade, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9137-9380
Nayanika Mookherjee Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences and Health, University of Durham, Durham, United Kingdom https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8994-4769

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.21814/vista.4109

Keywords:

Art-Based Research, Gender-Based Violence, War-Time Rape, Birangona, Comics, Graphic Novels

Abstract

Comics and the recently emerged graphic novel format are among the art forms that researchers have chosen to disseminate and provide a visual representation of their work. This relationship between comics and research, which is part of a practice labelled as “arts-based research”, has been facilitated by comics’ recognised narrative and didactic abilities. Research on gender-based violence has not been deaf to the call of comics art, and, in some rare but interesting cases, it has exploited the features of the medium to visualise and circulate research findings. An example is the graphic novel Birangona (Mookherjee & Najmun Nahar, 2019 Durham University), authored by the researcher Nayanika Mookherjee and by the comics artist Najmun Nahar Keya, which was circulated, both in an online and paper version, with the aim of popularizing a set of guidelines on how to conduct oral history data collection with survivors of wartime rape. This interview with Professor Nayanika Mookherjee, the co-author of the graphic novel and the anthropologist who conducted the research with wartime rape testimonies from which the guidelines were taken, has the objective of presenting the arts-based research project Birangona and discussing, in a scholarly fashion, the implementation of visual arts methodologies (and comics-based methodologies in particular) to research gender violence.

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Author Biographies

Nicoletta Mandolini, Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Sociedade, Instituto de Ciências Sociais, Universidade do Minho, Braga, Portugal

Nicoletta Mandolini is a Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia junior researcher at the Communication and Society Research Centre at the University of Minho (Portugal), where she is working on the project Sketch Her Story and Make It Popular. Using Graphic Narratives in Italian and Lusophone Feminist Activism Against Gender Violence (https://www.sketchthatstory.com/). She worked as an Research Foundation - Flanders postdoctoral researcher at KU Leuven (Belgium) and holds a PhD from University College Cork (Ireland). She authored the monograph Representations of Lethal Gender-Based Violence in Italy Between Journalism and Literature: Femminicidio Narratives (Routledge, 2021). Among other articles on sexist abuse in contemporary literature and media, she co-edited the volume Rappresentare la Violenza di Genere. Sguardi Femministitra Critica, Attivismo e Scrittura (Representing Gender Violence. Feminist Perspectives Between Criticism, Activism and Writing; Mimesis, 2018). She is an active member of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Languages and Cultures research cluster on Violence, Conflict and Gender that she co-convened from 2016 until 2019. She is a founding member of Studying'n'Investigating Fumetti.

Nayanika Mookherjee, Department of Anthropology, Faculty of Social Sciences and Health, University of Durham, Durham, United Kingdom

Nayanika Mookherjee is a professor of political anthropology in Durham University and co-director of the Institute of Advanced Studies. Based on her book The Spectral Wound: Sexual Violence, Public Memories and the Bangladesh War of 1971 (Duke University Press, 2015), in 2019 she co-authored a graphic novel and animation film Birangona: Towards Ethical Testimonies of Sexual Violence During Conflict (www.ethical-testimonies-svc.org.uk) and received the 2019 Praxis Award. She has published extensively on anthropology of violence, ethics and aesthetics and she researches on gendered violence during wars, debates on reconciliation and transnational adoption. She has recently published the 2022 Journal of Royal Anthropological Institute special issue on irreconciliation and as a British academy fellow is continuing her research on transnational adoption.

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