AARCC Director Heads to San Diego Comic Con
Mark Martell, PhD, executive director of the UIC Asian American Resource and Cultural Center (AARCC), has been accepted to San Diego Comic Con (July 19 to 23). He will be on a panel entitled “The Changing Context of Asian American Narratives in Comics and Graphic Novels” with Eisener Award winner and author Pornsak Pichetshote (Infidel, The Good Asian), artist Eric Nguyen (White Savior), Rod Santos (Contra Costa College) and Windi Sasaki (University of California, San Diego). The panel, moderated by Dawn Lee (San Jose State University), will discuss how creators and academics create opportunities for students in higher education to contextualize Asian American comic book narratives and process the impact of traumatic events such as the COVID-19 pandemic and anti-Asian hate.
Additionally, Martell was accepted into the University of Michigan’s Diversity Scholars Network (DSN), an interdisciplinary, multi-institutional community of scholars committed to advancing understandings of historical and contemporary issues related to identity, difference, culture, representation, power, oppression and inequality–as they occur and affect individuals, groups, communities and institutions.