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Abstract: The prevalence of mainstream media as source of information on environmental issues and their tendency to draw global attention around a few major, dramatic environmental disasters (melting of glaciers in the Arctic, desertification and drought in the African continent, deforestation of the Amazon, oil pollution in the oceans, etc.), is creating in less conative readers/audience a lack of awareness of the damages suffered in the local territorial systems to which they belong and low willingness to collective action. Therefore, crossing and comparing the highest possible number of sources of information, preferring those that can generate a proactive response to events and themes concerning environmental sustainability and highlight deep local/global interconnections, is essential to attain an independent, critical, and responsible narration. After shortly illustrating some theoretical and methodological considerations developed in the areas of popular geopolitics, anti-geopolitics and ecocriticism, this paper reviews two Italian graphic novels providing a bottom-up representation of local environmental issues: the first one deals with the eutrophication of the Orbetello Lagoon (Tuscan Maremma); the second one concerns the collapse of the tailings dams of the Prestavèl fluorite mines located in Val di Stava (Trentino Alto Adige), a disaster that caused the death of 268 people. We will try to point out how the authors, who are totally “embedded” in their works, provide a “translocal” narration, condemning effectively and immediately the environmental damages in the territorial context analysed and, at the same time, highlighting the interconnections between such site-specific events and global sustainability, inviting readers to adopt an holistic view of the nature-culture relationship, beyond the anthropocentric and instrumentalist production model which considers biosphere a mere tool to satisfy the contingent needs of contemporary society.

Due to the originality of its aesthetic approach in representing a traumatic testimony, Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus is one of the most famous works about the Holocaust produced by the post-memory generation. Within the currents of thought on the Holocaust, it is possible to conceive its style of representation as a pertinent and ethically valid solution to the dilemma of images v. testimony. Likewise, it is worth noting how its essentially fragmented, narrative approach reflects conditions in which the work was created: the scarcity of sources and the traumatic and familiar component of the memory represented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the beginning of the 21st century, young adults' literature has seen a modus change, transitioning from realistic literature of the problem novel genre to graphic problem novels. This transition stemmed from changing reading habits and literacy levels, with younger generations seeking visuality in addition to texts. The aim of this article is to examine and map out the genre of the middle grade graphic problem novel from a structuralistic approach, which tends to include a distinct format, whereby the protagonist, who is facing a significant crisis, manages to overcome at least some issues. While this genre is similar to the realistic problem novel for young adults that was popular in the 1980s, it is unique in its protagonist characteristics, who I refer to as "hybrid heroes." These heroes encompass traits of both classical heroes and anti-heroes, deal with crises throughout most of the plot, and are in constant survival mode. Moreover, illustrations replace regular monologues, striving to convey what is going on within the protagonist's consciousness, yet with an added layer of humor. To map this genre, in this paper I analyze three middle grade graphic problem novels: Just Jaime by Terri Libenson, Heartstopper by Alice Oseman, and Middle School by James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past three decades saw the emergence of a new trend of graphic novels that depict individual and collective trauma and violence. This article briefly explores the historical and cultural conditions that favored the appearance of trauma narratives in the graphic novel. It also studies one of the many re-figurations of Sara Baartman in the graphic novel, Vénus Noire (2010) by Renaud Pennelle and Abdellatif Kechiche and explores how the graphic novel can contribute to an understanding of black sexuality and scientific portrayal of the body of indigenous people (Baartman in our case) by studying the social and cultural conditions of people of color in Europe and colonies in the eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is premised on the concept of citizenship theory, primarily what is often called cultural citizenship and how this kind of approach can provide insight on narrative development of superhero comic book characters Spider-Man (Peter Parker) and Mary Jane Watson. By positioning the analysis within discourse theory (enforced by representational theory) it relies on the idea of the private and public sphere, the starting point of Lauren Berlant's notion of citizenship, and how gender roles framed Mary Jane Watson and superhero Spider-Man in the process of gendering national identity. This article draws on two main sets of analyses – the wedding ceremony of Peter and Mary Jane that happened outside comic book panels, at the Shea Stadium in New York in 1987, and Tom DeFalco's story Maximum Carnage from 1992. These cases are tackled from the position of gender representation with the focus on elaborating how the discourses about gender and citizenship positioned the character of Mary Jane and Spider-Man into the realm of gendered Americanness. The embeddedness of these findings places Mary Jane as a vital part of Spider-Man stories while pointing out specific discursive forms of gendered nationality in American popular superhero narratives: domesticated female identity and active male identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I argue that Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth shares with the work of cultural critics Saidiya Hartman and Christina Sharpe an awareness of how the terms of slavery continue to shape our contemporary political reality and our individual identities. Ware challenges readers to recognize signs of slavery's afterlife in a comics narrative about four generations of white men. This essay charts the complex pathways by which slavery and its violence continue to circulate in the novel's contemporary landscape, indelibly marking both its white and its Black characters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Neben vielen anderen Charakterisierungen, etwa ‚Jahrhundert der Diktatoren‘, ist für das 20. Jahrhundert wahrscheinlich auch die Formulierung ‚Jahrhundert der Angst‘ gerechtfertigt. Dieser Beitrag ist ein erster Versuch, die Darstellung von Angst in verbal-piktoralen Narrativen zu erschließen. Text- und Bildspuren zu Angst – politisch genutzte Techniken der Angsterzeugung einerseits und bis zu dauerhafter Traumatisierung gehende Angsterfahrung andererseits – sind in vielen Graphic Novels zur Geschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts ein wesentliches Deutungsangebot. Obwohl ästhetisch und intellektuell anspruchsvoll, somit ein Angebot zur Aufarbeitung von Geschichte, ist diese Fokussierung von Angst der Forschung bislang entgangen. Diese Untersuchung betrifft erlebte und erlittene Geschichte vom Ersten Weltkrieg bis zur Wendezeit um 1989. In einer Auswahl von fünf Graphic Novels deutscher, französischer, polnischer und tschechischer Experten des Genres, bieten gerade die Bildspuren atmosphäri­sche Dichte, Genauigkeit und zugleich Offenheit für weitere Interpretation.

The importance of the image in the communicative process is not questionable. The goal of this study is to consider the implications that derive from the translation of a text that combines the visual with the verbal code; we refer to the comic or comic strip. In academic circles, this iconic-verbal object has not enjoyed excessive attention, even sometimes it has been called an uncomfortable object. However, there is no lack of studies that in their time underlined its academic interest and currently there are different works that focus on this mode of expression underlining its importance. Therefore, the Italian translation of El Eternauta will be the object of our research.

This paper focuses on a Peruvian graphic novel, Rupay: Historias de la violencia política en el Perú (1980–1984), by Luis Rossell, Alfredo Villar, and Jesús Cossío, published in Lima in 2008. The paper analyzes the discourse of the novel and how it reflects on the so-called post-memory. First, we briefly discuss the problem of classifying the graphic novel itself as narrative genre, given that the visual turn is essential. In this sense, some fundamental antecedents are mentioned, such as Art Spiegelman and Joe Sacco, from the perspective of post-memory and non-fiction, respectively. Both cases propose themselves as truthful images of the real facts and as denounce documents. Second, the chapter deals with the discourse analysis of Rupay, as a polyphonic archive, gathering multiple testimonies and dialoguing with other texts –and illustrations– to the extent of incorporating pictures to create a “real effect” in the reader. Doing so, it contributes to preventing the forclusion of the traumatic political past. Words and images create a hybrid corpus that shows the violation of the body of the Peruvian nation, understood as one and only, from an authoritarian and monolithic vision, during the terrible period of the internal armed conflict and the Dirty War in Peru.

In this contribution, which starts with an analysis of the already consolidated relationship between architecture and comics, then tries to look deeper into the role of the family home within two graphic novels. Based on some theories, the comic book itself is a suitable medium for investigating stories related to buildings because the comic book pages recall the sections and shapes of the buildings. Looking instead into the merits of the two stories analyzed, beyond the obvious similarities and the inevitable differences between them, what emerges strongly is that the houses around which the stories rotate provide the opportunity to reflect profoundly on memory and absence. The accuracy of the details with which the two cartoonists manage to characterize their respective houses represents a refined exercise of memory and results in the houses themselves becoming protagonists of these stories, in which their respective fathers are absent, and whose lives have been spent in a large part in building those houses.

A graphic novel about Shigeru Ban.

This essay re-examines the often undervalued role that the American graphic novel played for members within the LBGT community during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980s. Particular focus is placed on the way in which graphic novelists responded to socially conservative leaders who seized medical language to pathologize homosexuality for the purpose of expediting the passage of regressive legislation. Both David Wojnarowicz's 7 Miles a Second and the interconnected panels of the AIDS Memorial Quilt addressed this process of systematic dehumanisation and sought to redeem a nation that was otherwise unwilling to confront the magnitude of what it had lost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how the protagonist’s image of ‘Heimat’ in the post-apocalyptic graphic novel Endzeit by Olivia Vieweg (2018) is defined by charging the diegetic present with nostalgic memory. The analysis focuses on the question of how the protagonist’s subjective perspective is reflected in the colour design of the graphic novel and how the ancient motif of the locus amoenus as an idyllic space in the post-apocalyptic wasteland influences the idea of home. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The objective of this article is to discuss the role of comics as a source of political and social influence, to understand the challenges in modern comics upholding of aesthetic simplicity and cultural authenticity. To explore comic's significance and value as a cultural art-form, several aspects of comic design and characterisation development through modernisation are discussed through literature and case studies, based on the problem statement: Can comics be a source of political and social influence For primary research, qualitative interviews and a survey were conducted among Malaysia's art and design communities using sequential mixed method research. The aim was to examine target audiences' perceptions of comic design and shifts in characterisation, and how global cultural trends such as media convergence and entertainment marketing affect comics' authenticity. Findings suggest that comics are not time-bound products; hence their immense capacity to engage fans despite shifts in characterisations. Significantly, comic art fans in Malaysia seem to adopt a conservative attitude in desiring characters to maintain aesthetic simplicity and cultural authenticity. Overall analysis suggests that maintaining original essence in characterisation enable audiences to understand artists' authentic cultural experiences through graphic storylines documenting the issues addressed. Results suggest that mainstreaming of comics propel the industry's future growth through diversification and inclusiveness of social narratives, but audience's perceptions of comics as a source of political and social influence maybe affected. Future research could probe the degree in which comics' aesthetics appeal and cognitive simplicity contribute to extending comics' role as an authentic global cultural art-form. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Universum is the property of Instituto de Estudios Humanisticos Juan Ignacio Molina, Universidad de Talca and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Im Folgenden wird eine Unterrichtsanregung zu literarischem Lernen mit Nora Krugs Graphic Memoir Heimat (2018) entwickelt. Im Zentrum der didaktischen Überlegungen steht die Kompetenz „Mit Fiktionalität bewusst umgehen“ (Spinner 2006) bzw. „Realitätsbezüge von Texten bestimmen“ (Maiwald 2015). Dazu eignet sich Heimat in besonderer Weise, da sie als Graphic Memoir reale und fiktive Inhalte sowie realistische und literarische Darstellungsweisen kunstvoll kombiniert. Aber nicht nur die ästhetische Gestaltung, auch das Thema ist anspruchsvoll. Nora Krug recherchiert ihre Familiengeschichte und verbindet damit die Frage nach der kollektiven Schuld und nationalen Identität Deutschlands nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg. Abhängig von Schulart, Klasse und angestrebter inhaltlicher Tiefe eignet sich Heimat für den Literaturunterricht von der späten Mittelstufe (9. oder 10. Jahrgangsstufe) bis zur Oberstufe. Das zentrale Ziel ist es, das Zusammenspiel von Faktualität und Fiktionalität für Schüler:innen durchschaubar und dessen besonderes epistemische Potential begreifbar zu machen. Dafür wird vorgeschlagen das kontrastive Verfahren intratextuelles Vergleichen (vgl. Kepser / Abraham 2016) über eine Progression der drei produktiven Verfahren Rekonstruktion, Restauration und Transformation zu realisieren (vgl. von Brand 2019). Abstract (english): Nora Krug’s graphic memoir Belonging. Literary learning with a text between factuality and fictionality This article describes the development of a model for learning with literature. The focus is on the thin line between fact and fiction, factuality and fictionality, respectively. It aims at improving students’ ability to distinguish between those two main categories, but also to discover the epistemic potential of the area in between (cf. Spinner 2006 and Maiwald 2015). Nora Krug’s graphic memoir Belonging (2018) is a challenging book, for that matter. She combines original documents and historic photographs with colored drawings and text. In doing so, she reconstructs the history of her family and at the same time she raises the question of Germany’s ambivalent past and collective guilt. The developed model is suitable for students from the higher grades of secondary school . The method applied is an intratextual comparison (cf. Kepser/Abraham 2016 and von Brand 2019) to contrast the different forms of presentation in Belonging and to illustrate the special aesthetics of their combination.

Graphic memoirs offer a visual representation of the relationship between a moment and the construction of memory. McCloud describes the work of the comic author and the reader as a dance between “the seen and the unseen”. This is what makes the medium of graphic memoirs unique, as it “gives so much to its audience while asking so much from them as well” (1993, p. 92). My aim in this paper is to ascertain the impact using graphic conventions has on the effective and affective construction of meaning and identity in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic (2006) and howr The Gutter becomes even more significant in graphic memoirs, because the use of panels can fracture the flow of the narrative into the sequenced segments which alternate with the blank spaces of the gutters. These blank spaces represent an effort to redefine the “connections between memory and history, private experience and public life” via a written account and the “act of witness” represented by a combination of the visual and the verbal (Cvetkovich, 2008, 111-20). Using this mix of image and text, Bechdel creates an almost palimpsestic effect as a majority of panels show items layered over other images, indicating a blending between the narrative of Bechdel’s real life experience and the representation of that life experience in the text. For the reader, this can imply a way to address the gaps in knowledge not only for them but also for Bechdel herself.

Shaun Tan's The Arrival is the surreal wordless tale of a migrant coming to a new and unfamiliar land. It is a graphic novel drawn in sepia tones, that displays a fantastic universe full of imaginary animals, retro-futuristic machineries, and a ubiquitous, unintelligible language. Comments on the work, which enjoyed a large critical and commercial success, notably praised the nostalgic allure of its richly detailed pencil drawings, the author's vivid imagination and the self-proclaimed 'universal' appeal of the tale recounted. This essay uses The Arrival as a case study to investigate how graphic novels can achieve a nostalgic effect, not only through the use of thematic elements, but also thanks to structural and stylistic features. It does so by examining the relation between nostalgia and migration; then, through an investigation of the style, structure and motifs exhibited by Tan's text, it discusses the strategies it adopts to prompt in its reader a nostalgic reaction; it explores its sense of pastness; it reflects on the symbolic value of Tan's visual imaginary, full of intertextual references mostly orbiting around the migration theme; finally, it questions the purported universality of Tan's story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the latest authors to retell biblical stories in graphic novel form has been Chester Brown, a well-known Canadian underground illustrator who in 2016 released Mary Wept Over the Feet of Jesus, a novel containing adaptations of biblical stories in which the protagonists are fundamentally women. The aim of our work has been to study the interpretative viewpoint of the female-centric stories told by Brown, investigating additions, omissions, and changes to the biblical source text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sarnath Banerjee's second graphic novel The Barn Owl's Wondrous Capers, a delightfully complex and remarkably multilayered work, is a significant contribution to Indian Graphic Narratives. This paper focuses on identifying and examining the layering strategies inherent in the text that endow it with its characteristic depth, complexity and density. The strategies identified include the exploitation of the multimodality of the comic format, the employment of multiple media, the incorporation of the legend of the Wandering Jew as the central trope, the playful treatment of history, a thematic layering of characters, and the utilization of intratextuality (textual echoes) and intertextuality. The paper further explores the way in which Calcutta, the primary setting of the novel, is rendered as a palimpsest-like entity where the colonial past is layered over by a post-colonial present. The novel's emphasis upon a local readership with a global bent, leads to layers of reading based on readerly competence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pictorial narrative types contain the technical possibilities of the period in which they were created. As time changes, some differences are observed in the production styles of graphic novels. If we need to talk about the historical development of comics, which is a form of sequential visual expression; It is necessary to examine the visual images in the pictorial papyrus manuscripts of medieval and even ancient Egyptian civilization. When the depictions in some medieval European manuscripts are examined, there are concrete and valid works that can be accepted as the ancestors of graphic novels. Over time, the industrialization of mankind has also improved printing and graphic techniques. Weekly or daily illustrative narratives and cartoons in newspapers found a unique place and became comics. By the beginning of the 20th century, when cinema did not develop or go everywhere, comics reached many places. Extraordinary environments or crazy ideas that cinema could not do at that time were conveyed to the reader through graphic novels. Although cinema and digital art elements have developed today, graphic novels are still made and sold. In addition, the production of graphic novels, one of the technical elements of the digital era, has also been affected in both production and publishing. Since the end of the 20th century, the combination of picture and text that has formed the graphic novel; moved from traditional production to computer environment. Therefore, the production features of the graphic novels and the virtual effects used in producing images are intertwined in terms of production in some graphic novels made after the 20th century and in the 21st century. This situation brought the traditional and technological possibilities of graphic novels production against each other. This situation is examined in the article and the effects of digitalization on the imaginative interpretation of graphic novels are emphasized with examples. The effects of digitization of graphic novels on imagination and perception of reality compared to traditional comic book production were compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the rationale for definitions of the homeless in the public imagination and the kind of discourses used to create a physical, psychological, and moral distance between the domiciled and the destitute. In a society where the worthy individual is tied to an ideal of entrepreneurial, rational, homed, successful consumer, and where public space is solely destined for the unobstructed consumption of the privileged, street dwellers are naturally seen as a threat to the economic, social, and moral order as well as a visual blemish: an obstacle to safety and wellbeing. Drawing from a number of sociological, urban, and narrative studies on the survival tactics of homeless people, and especially from Nicholas Blomley's (2010) insights about street mobility and Leon Anderson's (2017) classifications of stigma management, this article describes how subjects defined as pathological, dangerous, or pitiful, negotiate street restrictions and create their own standing within a revanchist city. These individuals feature in two comic books published in Canada, Zanta: The Living Legend (2012) and The Dregs (2017), whose originality lies in the heroic role the street person assumes, a legitimate searcher for meaning that sees what most people overlook. In their different format as non-fiction comic and serialized fictional comic we find the expressive visual and narrative potential of the genre and become witnesses of the tribulations of two characters whom the world may consider as deranged but are, however, able to enhance their self-esteem, dismantle ideologies behind assumed notions of respectability, and actively contribute to the city as a place of encounter with difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The doctor-patient relationship and the improvement of the patients’ health conditions through storytelling multiple forms, from cinema to digital diaries, is the current research issue of the narrative medicine. Recently the graphic medicine has been establishing itself as a form of sick and disabled persons’ self-understanding. The patients transform their suffering into images as to be able to better express their condition. Indeed neuroscientists and cognitivists have shown how the empathy coefficient increases when the analogical language replaces the verbal one, since communication occurs through a progressive emotions’ physicalization. The graphic novels, narrating the diseases course, have a therapeutic function both on the authors who decide to tell about themselves in first or third person, as well as on the readers, in which the scientific community currently detects empathic identifications and consequent cathartic processes.

This article compares two graphic novels dealing with the subject of modern border crises, namely Joe Sacco’s Palestine and Jérôme Ruillier’s The Strange, by considering empathy creation in visual media. Ruillier’s The Strange, whose stated goal is to elicit empathy by presenting the viewer with as many narrative perspectives as possible, is a graphic novel dealing with the translation of a refugee in a nondescript fantasy world which only vaguely alludes to the recent refugee crisis in France. Ruillier gives passersby, police officers, activists, and the protagonist’s own smuggler equal self-representation, which results in a fragmented narrative structure that does not bring the refugee’s own voice to the fore. This technique, combined with the lack of a specific socio-political context for the protagonist’s translation, engenders empty empathy in the viewer’s reaction to the refugee’s trauma, mainly due to The Strange being a patchwork creation of refugee stories whose common denominator is personal pain, something which cannot elicit authentic empathy. This article proposes a comparison with Joe Sacco’s Palestine, which illustrates specific stories from Gaza and the West Bank, and whose events compel Sacco to throw in his lot with the refugees; this second perspective highlights the difference between empty empathy and witnessing, and in the process underlines what Ruillier’s work lacks in its treatment of borders and refugees.

Dante’s biography and his most famous works have recorded a significant number of rewritings in the form of graphic novel in contemporary literature. Two works deserve a special mention in the Italian context: Dante Alighieri by Alessio D’Uva, Filippo Rossi and Astrid, and Farinata degli Uberti by Corso Tarantino, both published by KleinerFlug in 2014 and 2015.

Nonostante sia rimasto nell’ombra a lungo,La Regenta(1884-85) di Leopoldo Alas ‘Clarín’ è oggi considerato uno dei romanzi capolavoro della letteratura spagnola della fine dell’Ottocento. Il processo del suo riconoscimento come classico moderno, sebbene ancora ‘relativo’, si è avviato a partire dagli anni cinquanta del ventesimo secolo e non si è più arrestato. La vitalità de La Regentain epoca contemporanea è attestata anche dalle tante riscritture che ha originato. L’articolo ne traccia una panoramica per poi soffermarsi sull’analisi dell’adattamento a graphic novel(1999-2001) di Isaac del Rivero e sulla presenza nel web di siti dedicati all’autore e all’opera. Although it dwelt for a long time in the shadows, today La Regenta(1884-85) by Leopoldo Alas ‘Clarín’ is considered a masterpiece among late-nineteenth-century Spanish novels. Its recognition as a modern classic, though still “limited,” began in the Fifties of the twentieth century and has not stopped since. La Regenta’s significance for the contemporary period is demonstrated by its many rewritings. This paper provides a review of these before analyzing in greater detail its adaptation as a graphic novel (1999-2001) by Isaac del Rivero, as well as the presence on the internet of websites devoted to the novel and its author.

Fun home é uma autobiografia em formato de graphic novel da quadrinista Alison Bechdel. Trata-se de uma obra na qual a autora discorre acerca do que denomina sua “jornada de autodescobrimento”. Perpassa por episódios que marcaram sua trajetória, em especial o confronto do pai com a sexualidade dele próprio, o empenho da mãe em manter as aparências e a busca da autora, enquanto adolescente lésbica, por sua identidade. Através dessa obra, é possível vislumbrar a assertiva de Stuart Hall de que a identidade é um processo sempre em construção. Fun home nos permite fazer uma digressão sobre questões que tratam de identidade, gênero, sexualidade e normatização dos papéis sociais através do processo de identificação e exclusão realizado por Bechdel, já que, a todo momento, há uma contraposição entre suas ideias e vontades pessoais e livros, personagens e papéis sociais observados em autoras feministas e sobretudo na relação do pai com sua própria sexualidade. Confirma-se, assim, a proposição de Tomaz Silva de que as diferenças estão implícitas em qualquer identificação.

This paper explores the narrative and visual resourcesused in Colombian comics, from 1992 to the presentday, in order to describe dystopian representations of Bogotá city. Dystopia is generally understood as a negative view 28La Bogotá distópica: los cómics sobre una ciudad en caosSergio Roncallo-Dow - Daniel Aguilar-Rodríguezy Enrique Uribe-Jongbloedfor humanity either of a possible future or an alternative present. These fictions are classified here as dystopias about a technologi-cal failure, dystopias about a symbolic/physical coercion, apocalyp-tic dystopias about zombies/infected individuals and apocalyptic dystopias about supernatural/non-human events. For this research study, printed publications available since 1992 (130 items) were collected. Out of these fictions, those that were set in or made re-ference to the city of Bogotá were selected. Of the 45 comics that met this criterion, 28 were identified and analyzed that contained a dystopian setting. One of the major findings was that violence and conflict, both symbolic and physical, are constant in the diffe-rent dystopic settings identified in the study sample, which reflects and projects the historical violence experienced in Colombia.