Dr. Knopf is an award-winning scholar of political, pop cultural, and visual rhetoric and a professor of speech and human communication.
Professor. Author. Speaker. Editor. Leader.
Christina M. Knopf, PhD
Secret Origin Story
As soon as she learned how to write, Christina Knopf wanted to write. Her first opus was a play starring stick puppets of teeth her class made in the first grade. By third grade, she was writing her own children’s stories. By seventh grade, she was sending angsty poetry and clever puns out into the void of rejection. By tenth grade, her guidance counselor convinced her the only way she was going to make a living as a writer was as a journalist. So, she went off to the local community college to major in communications. She soon discovered that broadcast journalism required more technical skills than she possessed, but that the writing, editing, and layouts for public relations was a lot of fun. So, she changed schools to study PR and journalism.
A cross between Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane – an intrepid girl news photographer - she soon became fascinated with how men like Lex Luthor get elected president, so she went to graduate school, a breeding ground for supervillains. After earning a PhD in sociology and communication, she, like Drs. Jonathan Crane, Harleen Quinzel, and Viktor Fries, became an outcast professor and researcher, struggling to be taken seriously and constantly complaining that she is cold.
A student of presidential address, and the child of an army veteran and pop-history fan, Dr. Knopf took an interest in the rhetoric surrounding war, both official and popular. Looking to leverage the combined power of Scarecrow’s horror and Harley’s humor, she eventually became a recognized expert in military cartooning.
This work proved to be her portal to the multiverse of politics of popular culture – from comics to camp, propaganda to protest, and serials to cinema. Military cartooning led to war movies and comics studies, which led to genre fictions in film and television, which led to spectralities studies... Along the way, these worlds overlapped with broader systems of humor and satire, visual communication, gender, freakery, spirituality, and more.
Her designs on world domination are, however, thwarted by laundry and a mortgage, so she has settled for defeating simulacra of superheroes in her creations as an amateur cosplayer and baker.
More than just escapist entertainment, comics offer a popular yet complicated vision of the American political tableau. Politics in the Gutters considers the political myths, moments, and mimeses in comic books—from nonfiction to science fiction, superhero to supernatural, serious to satirical, golden age to present day—to consider how they represent, re-present, underpin, and/or undermine ideas and ideals about American electoral politics.
Cartoons by hundreds of artists-at-arms from more than a dozen countries and spanning two centuries are included in this study—the first to consider such a broad range of military comics. War and military life are examined through the inside jokes of the men and women who served, looking at recurring themes of culture, hierarchy, enemies and allies, geography, sexuality, combat, and civilian relations, describing how comics function within a community.
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Routledge Advances in Comics Studies
Series Editors
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Matthew J. Smith
The Ohio State University, USA -
Christina M. Knopf
SUNY Cortland, USA -
Daniel F. Yezbick
St. Louis Community College, USA
Routledge Advances in Comics Studies promotes outstanding research on comics and graphic novels from communication theory, rhetorical theory and media studies perspectives. Additionally, the series aims to bring European, Asian, African, and Latin American comics scholarship to the English speaking world. The series includes monographs and themed anthologies. Comics Studies is a rapidly evolving field with much exciting research still to be done, and Routledge Advances in Comics Studies is dedicated to furthering the understanding of comics as an art form and a medium of communication.