The University of Stupid Mississippi

One of my favorite comics scholars, Jeet Heer, has posted an interview with the former director of the University Press of Mississippi, hands down THE academic press for comics scholarship. There's been some talk about his interview with Seetha Srinivasan over on the comics scholars list serve, and Heidi at the Beat has covered it as well.

I've got a different take than most, though, because I used to teach at the University of Southern Mississippi, one of the schools associated with the press. Srinivasan talks about the hurdles comics scholarship has had to overcome and gives some good examples of would-be comics scholars having to fight a mountain of an uphill battle to have their interests taken seriously.

While I was on faculty in the English department at USM, I was told that my interest in comics was holding me back from the respect of other members of the department, especially since I was also an English Educator.

I was also informed that a member of the department had told students in other classes that it made his blood boil that USM offered courses on graphic novels. Those were many of the courses I taught, of course.

As well, when I tried to advertise what might have been the very first "Graphic novels as Young Adult Literature" course in the United States, which I taught in the summer of 2007, my fliers repeatedly disappeared from the English Department hallways -- both inside the main offices and in the commons areas. They even disappeared when I put them up during times that I knew only faculty would have access to the building. I ended up advertising the course in the school newspaper and had a nice enrollment for the course; this remains a rare instance in my life where money trumped evil.

The thing is, I did have students who were very interested in comics studies. One even ended up going to the University of Florida for her MA, where she may be enjoying a completely different culture when it comes to comics scholarship. I even had another young faculty member remark how well-prepared students from my comics class were when they came to her Literary Theory class later in the day.

The kicker, though, is that one of my required texts was a book published by the University Press of Mississippi, and often students read others as a free choice text for other assignments, so every time I taught a graphic novels course with a literary angle, I was asking students to put money back into the university press's coffers, and thereby offering a little bit of help to USM as well.

My guess is that many in the English Department at USM were ignorant of their press's reputation among comics scholars or that the press has been doing well in part because of its prestige as the best publisher of comics-related scholarship and the sales generated from comics-related titles. I wonder, though, now that a Harvard-affiliated scholar has published an article on comics in a recent PMLA, if any of the faculty are looking back, making connections, and thinking maybe it wasn't such a bad thing to have a comics scholar in the department after all. I have serious doubts about it. This is U.S.M. we're talking about, after all (see post title).


P.S. While I'm at it, I was recently informed that a google search for my name turns up my faculty profile at USM as the very first hit. I left the university in May and was told the profile would be removed by July. My hope is that the fraudulence will be resolved shortly. I'm at UTEP now and will be teaching graphic novels in various English, English Education, and graduate-level courses starting fall 2008. Actually, I just taught Persepolis and American Born Chinese in a summer session YA Lit class. Alas, it was not all graphic novels this time around, but who knows what the future may hold?