Back in the Cartoon Museum‘s new home again, this time for a lovely evening at the launch of Kate’s labour of love over the past several years. Her new book on the history of LGBTQ+ is called Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide. It’s published by Myriad and it’s essential reading. Here’s Joe Gordon’s review on Down the Tubes. And here are some photos from the evening:

A brief trip to London last week for the official opening of the Cartoon Museum in its new home. It’s huge! I was particularly glad to see that Kate Charlesworth’s forthcoming Sensible Footwear: A Girl’s Guide had dedicated exhibition space right in the centre (watched over by Auntie Studs herself!):
Here are some more pics taken during the evening:

Just a few photos of our talk on “Dotters and Babbos” at the Nordic Black Theatre in Oslo, part of their Bloomsday celebrations.
Following our event was a powerful adaptation of Joyce’s “A Little Cloud” (a short story from Dubliners), performed by Edwin Mullane.
Thanks to John Fitzpatrick (below right) for inviting us. Here we are having a grand day out on the fjord!

Alongside the graphic novel Rain (out in October 2019) I’ve also been working on a rather different project: a new edition of Language and Gender that’s scheduled for publication in November 2019. You can check it out in the Polity catalogue here.

Language and Gender first appeared in 1998. The opportunity to produce a third edition has been a challenge, but a very welcome one. The field has continued to be vibrant. In constant development, it has seen significant shifts since the book’s initial publication twenty years ago. The content and format of the original evolved from teaching in the 1980s and 1990s, and at the time it presented the field at its most up to date. It was certainly the first book of its kind to examine men and masculinities. If I were writing a book such as this from scratch, would I approach it differently? Yes, of course I would. I certainly wouldn’t include a chapter on masculinities focusing solely on cis-gender men, for example.

            What I have done for this volume is integrate new perspectives and research with established work, which allowed me to maintain the important historical overview. The historical perspective gives necessary background for an understanding of more recent, theoretically challenging developments.

            For the second edition I engaged with key new advances in the field, largely by producing two entirely new chapters. One of these examined gender and sexuality, focusing on heternormativity and resistance. For this new edition, I have added to it some attention to transgender in its coverage of LGBTQ issues. The other new chapter for the second edition dealt with public talk, particularly in politics and the workplace. As well as updating the chapter’s coverage generally for this new edition, I have incorporated attention to the worrying onslaught of online misogyny. Of course, many of the issues that the book addresses merit chapters – indeed books – on their own, but in this introduction to the field that would be impossible, owing to constraints of space. In an attempt to compensate for this necessarily limited coverage, I indicate sources providing greater detail in the Further Reading sections for each chapter.

(Preface to the third edition)

An estimated one million people came out to protest against the Brexit shambles last Saturday. There was a cheerful holiday atmosphere in Parliament Square – families having picnics. Very noticeably, the police presence at the march was focusing on a gaggle of forty or so Leave supporters in Trafalgar Square, with a police cordon and vans full of backup circulating around them. It was quite clear where they were anticipating problems.
Here are some images and a video at the end of David Lammy’s rousing speech. Give him a cheer!

The 46th Festival International de la bande dessinée took place last month. Bryan and I attended, for the first time in years, and it was great to see the town packed with people and bristling with all things BD.

I must say, though, that despite the sexism controversy a couple of years ago very little appears to have changed. The three major exhibitions were of Richard Corben, Milo Minara and an 80-year retrospective on Batman. The two discussion panels I saw had all-male line-ups. Here’s one, with six ‘industry professionals from the Continent and beyond’ and not one woman among them:

Well ok, in contrast with the all-male shortlist that triggered a boycott of the festival in 2016, this year the winner of the Fauve d’Or was a woman: American cartoonist Emil Ferris (yes, Emil is a woman’s name too – who knew?) for her graphic novel My Favorite Thing is Monsters.

A great place to hang out, anyway. Here are some photos:

It’s always nice to receive an unexpected parcel. One arrived from the publisher shortly before Christmas, containing a couple of copies of The Red Virgin, in Turkish. We’d already seen the Turkish edition of Dotter of her Father’s Eyes (it came out in late 2017) but it was a surprise to see details inside about Sally Heathcote Suffragette too. Obviously we knew it was in the pipeline, but not that it had been out for over a year.

There’s a clever little video promoting it, animating Kate Charlesworth’s artwork (though embarrassing that her name’s not on the cover…)