Maggie Gray

Dr Maggie Gray

Contact Details

Website: www.maggiegray.co.uk

Biography and Research Interests

Maggie Gray completed a PhD in History of Art at University College London in 2010, with a thesis entitled ‘Love Your Rage, Not Your Cage’: Alan Moore 1971-1989. Parts of this thesis have been published in various journals and book publications, and formed the basis of conference papers. She has taught comics, aesthetics and the theory and history of art and design as a visiting lecturer/ postgraduate teaching assistant at Middlesex University, Central St. Martin’s College of Art & Design, and University College London. Her next research project will be a study of the role of comics (form and iconography) in riot grrrl culture in the UK and US.

Research Interests: Alan Moore; British comics of the 1980s and early 1990s, riot grrrl, zines, underground comix, self-publishing and independent media, radical illustration, comics and fine art, Marxist aesthetics, feminism, anarchism, anti-capitalism/alter-globalisation, radical environmentalism, art activism.

Publications

‘Alan Moore’, Icons of American Comic Books: From Captain American to Wonder Woman. Ed.s Randy Duncan and Matthew J. Smith. 2013, Greenwood. Forthcoming.

‘A Gothic Politics: Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and Radical Ecology’, Alan Moore and the Gothic Tradition. Ed. Matt Green. 2012, Manchester, Manchester University Press. In Press.

‘Locas’, ‘Tank Girl’, ‘Saga of Swamp Thing’, ‘Watchmen’, 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die. Ed. Paul Gravett. 2011, London, Cassell Illustrated.

‘Alan Moore’s underground: The formation of a dissident cultural practice’, Studies in Comics, vol. 2, issue 1 (May 2011) pp. 21 – 38.

Review: Gary Spencer Millidge’s Alan Moore Storyteller (2011) Studies in Comics, vol. 2, issue 1 (May 2011)

‘A fistful of dead roses’ Comics as Cultural Resistance: Alan Moore and David Lloyd’s V for Vendetta, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, vol. 1, issue 1 (June 2010) pp. 31-49.

Review: Annalisa Di Liddo’s Alan Moore: Comics as Performance, Fiction as Scalpel (2009), Studies in Comics, vol. 1, issue 1 (April 2010) pp. 176-178.

“The Fantasy Bribe” Comics and Punk’, Kunst und Politik: Jahrbuch der Guernica-Gesellschaft, Schwerpunkt: Bildwissenschaft und Visual Culture Studies in der Diskussion. Band 10/2008, pp. 63 – 72.

‘Fascism knows only one Superman: The State’ Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta vs The Iron Lady’, OBJECT 10, (March 2008) pp. 62-80

Review: ‘TransAtlant-ink, Diorama Arts Centre, London, 24th November – 16th December 2005’, OBJECT 9, (January 2007) pp. 95-6

Conference Papers and Talks

‘A Gothic Politics: Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing and Radical Ecology’, Birkbeck Contemporary Fiction Research Seminar, Senate House, London, June 30th 2012.

Discussion on Academia and Comics with Jason Dittmer, Roger Sabin and Tony Venezia for the British Council ‘New Work, New Audiences’ Comic Book Study Tour. University College London, London, 16th December 2010.

‘Hanging Out With Halo Jones: the ‘first feminist comics heroine’? Comics Forum: Women in Comics II, Thought Bubble: Leeds Sequential Art Festival, Leeds City Art Gallery, Leeds, 18th November 2010.

‘Nothing But Flat, Dead Wood’? Comics and Ecocriticism, Transitions: New Directions in Comics Studies, Birkbeck, University of London, London, 5th November 2010.

Free School presents: ‘Hanging Out With Halo Jones’, Swedenborg Institute, London, 25th August 2010.

‘Alan Moore’s Underground: the formation of a dissident cultural practice’, Magus: Transdisciplinary Approaches to the work of Alan Moore, University of Northampton, Northampton, 28th – 29th May 2010.

‘Comics and the Art World’ as part of Seriously into Comics: An introductory panel, Thought Bubble: Leeds Sequential Art Festival, Leeds, 21st November 2009.

‘The Quest for Cultural Legitimacy: Comics in the Gallery’, Session: Art, Museums and the Changing Location of Visual Culture, Location: the Museum, the Academy and the Studio, 34th AAH Annual Conference, Tate Britain and Tate Modern, London, 2 – 4th April 2008.

‘The Fantasy Bribe’ Comics and Punk, Bildwissenschaft und Visual Culture in der Diskussion, Institute fur Kunstgeschichte, Universitat Karlsruhe (TH), 23-24th February 2008.

‘The Fantasy Bribe’ Comics, Punk and the Perfect Product, Marxism and the, Interpretation of Culture Seminar, Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, London, 15th February 2008.

‘All comics are political’ Comics as Cultural Resistance: Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta, The Aesthetics of Trash: Reassessing Animation and the Comic, Manchester Metropolitan University, 28 – 29th August 2007.