Motion comics—animated picture stories on historical subjects—have received little attention as a format for presenting public history. Yet due to their literally moving multi-perspectivity, motion comics readily engage viewers, especially with contested and complex national histories. In this article, I discuss the production process of motion comics as a vehicle for public history education. First, I provide a theoretical foundation for future analyses of motion comics as public history tools. Second, I share practical insights from the project “MoCom: Motion Comics as Memory Work,” which I conceptualized and supervised with cultural anthropologist Sarah Fichtner. I tie the theoretical and practical aspects together with discussion of my very first public history motion comic, “Ghost Train” (2020), about childhood memories from the divided Germany.
Motion Comics as Digital Public History: A New Means to Attain Multi-Perspectivity in Contested and Entangled Histories
Anja Werner is affiliated with the University of Erfurt in Germany, where she teaches German and US history, public history, and transcultural deaf history. An active founding member of the working group on the reduction of communication barriers in higher education (https://www.uni-erfurt.de/to/JnyVqYDiQaaa6jGD), Werner also produces inclusive public history learning materials. She studied history at Harvard University, the Université de la Sorbonne Nouvelle–Paris II in France and the University of Leipzig in Germany, where she earned her PhD degree in 2006. Among her publications are The Transatlantic World of Higher Education. Americans at German Universities, 1776–1914 (2013), and, forthcoming, an entangled international history of academic sign-language research and Cochlear Implants (CIs). Moreover, she published several edited volumes, including one on Black Intellectuals in the Atlantic World (2015/2017). Currently, she is working on a biography about Black deaf missionary Andrew Foster and his deaf German wife Berta, who between 1957 and 2009 founded more than thirty schools and churches for the deaf in thirteen African countries.
Anja Werner; Motion Comics as Digital Public History: A New Means to Attain Multi-Perspectivity in Contested and Entangled Histories. The Public Historian 1 February 2025; 47 (1): 67–100. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/tph.2025.47.1.67
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