Dr Aaron Humphrey
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aaronhumphrey.bsky.social
Dr Aaron Humphrey
@aaronhumphrey.bsky.social
31 followers 15 following 6 posts
Lecturer in Media and Digital Humanities at the University of Adelaide. I research visual and digital communication, with a focus on comics and graphic narratives.
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Reposted by Dr Aaron Humphrey
jas-jozstudies.bsky.social
Open category winner: Aaron Humphrey and Simon Walsh, “Lost Precursor to Autobiographical Comics, Kangarooland (ca. 1918–1919), Illuminates Transnational Creativity in Australia’s WWI Internment Camps,” JAS, 48:2 (2024), 209-29.

@aaronhumphrey.bsky.social

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Screenshot of journal article. Title: Lost Precursor to Autobiographical Comics, Kangarooland (ca. 1918–1919), Illuminates Transnational Creativity in Australia’s WWI Internment Camps. Authors: Aaron Humphrey and Simon Walsh. Abstract: Autobiographical graphic novels have become crucial texts for understanding displacement and transnational identities. This article discusses a long-lost early example of the genre, The Voyage and Adventures of a Well-Behaved German in Kangarooland (Reise-Abenteuer eines Braven Deutschen im Lande der Kangaroo), a series of proto-comic books created circa 1918–1919 by the cartoonist C. Friedrich. A German immigrant to Australia imprisoned in an Australian internment camp during World War I, Friedrich used his self-published comics to document the routines, passions and frustrations of camp life. Drawing on recent scholarship on “POW creativity” as a conceptual lens, we argue that the transnational displacement at the heart of Friedrich’s work affirms Kangarooland as a pioneering work that provides a conceptual link with later autobiographical graphic novels and which should lead scholars to question claims that autobiographical comics are an American-born genre. Its origins in displacement and transnationalism, themes that animate so many of the most renowned graphic novels of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, suggest the genre instead developed out of the ability of comics to depict transnationalism and the precarity of displacement.
July 22, 2025 at 1:02 AM
aaronhumphrey.bsky.social
Yes, this is a hashtag for a class assignment, set up to help students find each others' accounts. When we used to do this exercise on Twitter, the volume of posts drowned us out & no one ever stumbled upon it. I can see that it's pretty annoying here on bsky, tho so we'll adjust our approach!
March 1, 2024 at 6:36 AM
aaronhumphrey.bsky.social
Today leaving with the lens cap on feels silly but you realise pretty quickly. This one really hurt back in the days of film (each exposure costs $) and no digital displays providing feedback on what you photographed (which means you could take lots of photos without realising your mistake).
February 28, 2024 at 3:58 AM
aaronhumphrey.bsky.social
... sometimes it can't even do this very well :)
February 28, 2024 at 3:50 AM