Introduction
Hillary Chute (born Boston, MA, 1976) is an American literary scholar and an expert on comics and graphic narratives.
She is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Chicago and an Associate Faculty member of the University’s Department of Visual Arts. Chute received tenure at the University of Chicago in 2013. In 2006, she co-edited the "Graphic Narrative" special issue of Modern Fiction Studies. Chute was a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2007 to 2010. Her first book, Graphic Women, covers the work of Aline Kominsky-Crumb, Phoebe Gloeckner, Lynda Barry, Marjane Satrapi, and cartoonist Alison Bechdel. Her book, Disaster Drawn, was released by Harvard University Press in January 2016. It investigates how hand-drawn comics has come of age as a serious medium for engaging history and explores the ways graphic narratives by diverse artists, including Jacques Callot, Francisco Goya, Keiji Nakazawa, Art Spiegelman, and Joe Sacco, document the disasters of war.
Chute is the Associate Editor of Art Spiegelman’s MetaMaus, which won a 2011 National Jewish Book Award in the category Biography, Autobiography, Memoir, as well as a 2012 Eisner Award in the category of best comics-related book. She founded the Modern Language Association’s Discussion Group on Comics and Graphic Narratives in 2009. Chute collaborated with Bechdel in co-teaching “Lines of Transmission: Comics and Autobiography” at the University of Chicago as part of a Mellon grant, as well as organizing the “Comics: Philosophy and Practice” conference in 2012. In 2014, they co-authored the comics piece “Bartheses” in Critical Inquiry.
In 2013, Chute wrote a piece for Poetry about the relation of comics and poetry.
Publications
- Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics and Documentary Form (Harvard University Press, 2016)
- Comics & Media: A Critical Inquiry Book, co-edited with Patrick Jagoda (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
- Outside the Box: Interviews with Contemporary Cartoonists (University of Chicago Press, 2014)
- MetaMaus by Art Spiegelman, Associate Editor (Pantheon, 2011)
- Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics (Columbia University Press, 2010)