Nhora Lucía Serrano, visiting assistant professor of comparative literature, has been selected to serve on the judging panel of the 2018 Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards. Presented annually by Comic-Con International (CCI), the Eisner Awards are the industry’s most prestigious, recognizing the best in comics publication, writing, art, and scholarship. They are frequently referred to as “the comic book world's version of the Oscars.” Comic-Con International is a nonprofit educational corporation dedicated to creating awareness of, and appreciation for, comics and related popular artform.
According to CCI, the judging panel, that changes every year, includes “a comics creator, a critic/reviewer, a graphic novel librarian, a comics retailer, a scholar, and a member of the Comic-Con organizing committee. The judges are selected by a special awards committee within Comic-Con International.” For Serrano, the opportunity to serve as a judge for the Eisner Awards is truly an incredible honor and a personal dream.
Serrano, who represents the scholar on the judging panel, and her five fellow judges will select individuals to be inducted into the Hall of Fame and will meet in April to select nominees for the Eisner Awards ballot from submissions made by the public. Following voting by industry professionals, the winners will be announced at Comic-Con in San Diego (July 19-22, 2018). Serrano looks forward to working with her fellow judges to create a ballot that truly represents the best in comics from 2017.
At Hamilton, Serrano regularly teaches a fall course that focuses on the development of the medium from editorial cartoons, newspaper strips to present-day graphic novels. In the spring ’18 she will be teaching a new interdisciplinary course on Immigrants and Comics that examines how comics were shaped by the immigrant story and how comics inscribe immigrant identity and experience.
Serrano is currently the treasurer and founding member of the Comics Studies Society and serves on the MLA Executive Forum on Comics and Graphic Narratives. As a visual culture and transatlantic studies scholar, her comics research and teaching centers on the relationship between museums and comics, immigration and graphic satire, U.S. Latinx & Latin American comics, early 20th century Chicago newspaper cartoonists, and the figure of Columbia (the historico-poetic name used for the United States before “Uncle Sam”) in editorial cartoons.
Serrano is a recent recipient of a Special Collections fellowship at Hamilton, where she is studying the George Cruikshank collection. An author of several visual studies articles and encyclopedia entries, Serrano’s edited anthology Immigrants and Comics: Graphic Spaces of Remembrance, Transaction, and Mimesis (Routledge) will be forthcoming in 2018.
