Programme

"Being a Woman is Serious Business": The Influence of Czech Society on Female Identity Construction

The analysis presented in this paper focuses on "Srdcovka" (A Matter Close to Heart, 2023), a recent graphic memoir by Czech author Štěpánka Jislová. The memoir closely follows the formative years of Štěpánka, a young girl grappling with the various challenges of growing up and coming of age within the context of Czech patriarchal norms. This paper seeks to investigate the gendered construction of female identity through an examination of Štěpánka's character development. Furthermore, the paper also delves into how social expectations and gender norms shape her behaviour within romantic relationships. Would the protagonist's adolescence have been different if she had been born with a male body? What impact do gender roles and societal norms have on her behaviour in relationships? The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive analysis that employs an interdisciplinary approach, integrating insights from several fields of study – especially autobiographical studies, comics studies, and gender studies. This approach enables a detailed examination of both the narrative and visual representation of identity construction.

Keywords: autobiographical comics, Srdcovka, identity, gender

Biography

Lucie Lindnerová is a graduate of Czech Language and Literature from the Faculty of Arts at Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. Currently pursuing her master’s degree in literature and Intercultural Communication at the same institution. Her academic focus centres on literary theory, narratology, memory studies, and the exploration of autobiographical writing within contemporary Czech literature.

References

• BUTLER, Judith. Gender trouble. New York: Routledge, 1990.
• CHUTE, Hillary. Graphic Women. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
• JISLOVÁ, Štěpánka. Srdcovka. Praha: Paseka, 2023.
• KUNKA, Andrew. Autobiographical Comics. New York: Bloomsbury, 2018.
• SOUKUPOVÁ, Klára. Vyprávět sám sebe. Praha: Filozofická fakulta Univerzity Karlovy, 2021.

Graphic Humor in Language Teaching

Thematic area: Comics for Society

This presentation aims to examine the use of graphic humor as an effective tool in the classroom, particularly with second-language learners. In addition, strategies for integrating graphic humor into language instruction will be discussed, including the selection of appropriate materials, creation of engaging activities, and adaptation to learners' cultural backgrounds.

Drawing on the theoretical framework from the Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) approach, and taking as a real-life example the experience with a group of French master students in a Spanish learning environment, this work investigates how incorporating graphic humor lessons can enhance language learning and promote cultural understanding.

The aforementioned approach is applied by selecting satirical pieces, related to current social problems or polemic events. In this way, students will engage with the type of content that will allow them to not only develop specific vocabulary related to various topics but also to progress in their language skills from a cognitive and socio-cultural dimension. This is because “graphic humor presented as comic strips cannot be understood without prior knowledge” (Sędek, 2020, p. 120).

Given that satirical comics portray a critique of society through stereotypes reflecting social representations, as indicated by Montealegre (2020, p. 9), and have a strong bond with the political conditions from which they arise, students must gain this knowledge to decode and fully understand the idea expressed by the cartoonist. Comics may speak of changes in governments, or xenophobia regarding certain nationalities, for instance - hence the chance to promote significant socio-cultural awareness in a foreign language.

Biographical note

Valentina Brito is a young Venezuelan professional with a degree in Modern Languages. She is currently employed as a visiting Spanish teacher at the University of Lorraine in Nancy, where she teaches business language and cultural subjects.

Previous professional experiences include being a Spanish language assistant in France and working as an English teacher at a bilingual school in Venezuela.

Bibliographical References

• Agüero, M. Análisis semántico-cognitivo del discurso humorístico en el texto multimodal de las viñetas de Forges [Semantic-cognitive analysis of humorous discourse in the multimodal text of Forges' cartoons] ELUA Estudios de Lingüística Universidad de Alicante, N° 27, 2013, pp. 7-30, https://rua.ua.es/dspace/bitstream/10045/36638/1/ELUA_27.pdf
• Montealegre, J. Humor y Política en América Latina: Hervi, el Imperfecto [Humor and Politics in Latin America: Hervi the Imperfect], Intus-Legere Historia, Vol. 14, N° 1, 2020, pp. 5-19, ISSN 0718-5456| EISSN 0719-8949 2020, https://www.academia.edu/101069101/Humor_y_Pol%C3%ADtica_en_Am%C3%A9rica_Latina_Hervi_El_Imperfecto?f_ri=549018
• Sędek, M. Humor gráfico como una herramienta de denuncia política en la Venezuela contemporánea [Graphic humor as a tool of political protest in contemporary Venezuela], Atlante. Revue d’études romanes, N°13, Automne 2020, p. 119-139, ISSN 2426-394X, https://atlante.univ-lille.fr/data/images/atlante-13/6-se-dek-revu-2020-vh-decembre.pdf