Race and identity in Krazy Kat: Performance, Aesthetics, Perspectives

Race and identity in Krazy Kat: Performance, Aesthetics, Perspectives

University of Oregon
June 2014
79 pages

Zane Mowery

A Thesis Presented to the Department of English and the Robert D. Clark Honors College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts

This work marks an attempt to redirect the focus of academic writing on race in the early twentieth-century comic strip Krazy Kat away from its author, George Herriman, and towards the comic itself. I argue that Herriman displays deep concerns with race and (more generally) identity in his work, but that these concerns do not necessarily stem from his own race or family history. In the end, Herriman’s work takes a far more complex perspective towards race and identity than current analysis would imply, and this thesis therefore serves as an attempt to reopen the dialogue around Herriman and race by establishing a new point of commencement for such investigations.

Read the entire thesis here.

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