For too long, the narrative of the Rust Belt has been one of emptiness, decay, decline, and vacancy—and often, our stories are neglected in the national sphere or controlled by cultural outsiders. Through the act of comics storytelling, many creators are pulling the Rust Belt into the dynamic present—resisting the active erasure of this place between coasts. In this panel, we turn to comics and graphic novels because the study of the form found its footing through the study of trauma. Comics resist claims of un-representability as they suture words and images, thoughts and feelings. They draw upon the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries’ greatest sufferings so that readers might fully bear witness. Our panel draws attention to the way that the Rust Belt as a place is represented in the public imaginary—reduced to labels like “flyover country” or “Middle America”—and to the power of comics to reframe these harmful narratives. This region, which signifies both everything and nothing in the political imaginary and in turn has been invisiblized, is also rooted, framed, and reimaged through comics. This panel leans into and learns from comics studies’ ability to represent the internal life of the individual and thinks about how comics has also simultaneously documented place. From Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster’s early issues of Action Comics, which told stories rooted in Cleveland; to more recent documentaries of place like Derf Backderf’s Kent State: Four Dead in Ohio; to Saladin Ahmed’s Abbott, an alternative history of Detroit; to Frank Santoro’s Pittsburgh, comics are taking an active role in marking and making place visible. This panel highlights the significance of place in comics storytelling in order to consider how we might reactivate spaces that have been erased in the public imaginary.

The panel will be organized around three papers, each focusing on a different comic featuring the Rust Belt—works that actively resist the erasure of place in the public imaginary. Rafael Abrahams will speak to the question of the Rust Belt as a mirror for the American public and consider how stories like those by Harvey Pekar in American Splendor document not only the everyday life of its author, but also serve to bring into focus the prototypical Rust Belt City. In his paper, he demonstrates how comics defamiliarize our familiar images of what has been termed “ruin porn”; these stereotypes, now re-drawn and re-imagined by hand, are given new life. Emiliano Aguilar will consider the General Iron conflict of Chicago through the, eyes of Latinx workers’ rights activists as they are represented in the comic Reclaiming the Sacrifice Zone. Comics’ ability to document space lends itself to showing not only the individuals’ response to a strike, but also its impact on place. Finally, Valentino Zullo will turn to Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang’s Paper Girls, which situates Cleveland across time and as central to the apocalyptic events unfolding across the universe. The Cleveland Public Library of the imagined future literally serves as a repository for Cleveland’s memorial archive (the vessel takes the form of a giant tree); this Rust Belt city becomes an anchor and touchpoint across all of history—the repository of information through which its residents’ attachment and understanding of place are rooted. Katharine G. Trostel will serve as presider in her capacity as the co-founder of the Rust Belt Humanities Lab. Trostel will offer brief, opening remarks (five minutes) followed by the three, fifteen-minute presentations. Trostel will then offer one or two framing questions for the panel and the remainder of the session will be dedicated to audience-driven conversation.

The panel represents various identities, including but not limited to gender, race (including Middle Eastern and Latinx), as well as sexualities. Each of the presenters, including the presider, embody multiple intersectional categories and each will use those experiences to inform their understanding of the Rust Belt. Collectively, we refute an understanding of the Rust Belt as a place only of whiteness.