This book studies human rights discourse across a variety of graphic novels, both fiction and non-fiction, originating in different parts of the world. It demonstrates the emergence of the 'universal' subject of human rights, despite the variations, through a study of these vastly different authors and styles.
'Prolific polymath, Pramod K. Nayar has done it again! Deploying his trademark nimble and piercing humanistic analytic lens, he peels back and vitally reveals how graphic narratives forcefully wake us to the traumas of our planet's most vulnerable. In an awe-inspiring sweep of comics from Africa and Asia as well as the Indian Subcontinent, Middle East, Balkans, and Indigenous Americas Nayar beautifully articulates powerfully generative concepts that enrich deeply our sense of how visual shaping devices like the panel function as more than windows to witness brutalities, humiliations, genocides. They wake us to new ways of perceiving, thinking, and feeling that deeply connect us with the most vulnerable. They wake us to action. Nayar does with Comics Studies what Judith Butler and Barbara Harlow have done for human rights and the humanities. A must-read tour de force!' - Frederick Luis Aldama, Distinguished University Professor, Ohio State University, and Eisner Award winner for the best scholarly work in Comics Studies