From Phoebe Gloeckner's 11-10-22 CHRONICLE OF HIGHER EDUCATION article entitled "My Cartoonish Cancellation: How I Became the Subject of an Equity Investigation at the University of Michigan":
In late August of 2020, I began teaching my introductory comics course at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in the same way and with the same material that I had used many times before. It’s a studio course with a smattering of history. In the first week, I assigned a technical exercise involving a comics page drawn by Robert Crumb, one of the first and most important cartoonists of the underground-comix movement. The point was to study and imitate the way Crumb created the illusion of space and three-dimensional form.
Some might call the images grotesque. In the past, though, the exercise has always been a success.
But in 2020, we were all “sheltering in place” because of the pandemic, and I was teaching on Zoom. The students Googled Robert Crumb before I could say much to contextualize his work. They immediately raised their voices in protest. Quoting from what they read, they insisted that Crumb was a “racist” and a “misogynist.” One student cried out that he had been accused of rape. Several insisted that showing any of his work was “hurtful.” They said I was “harming” the class.
I was taken aback. Comics are fundamentally a provocative medium, and Crumb is a provocative artist, but I didn’t think I had shown an especially offensive image. Crumb and his work have been the target of both high praise and bitter criticism for years, but before that moment, most of the students knew nothing about him — and seemed unwilling to question what they had read about him on the internet. Moreover, Crumb is a central figure in the history of comics. He can’t be written out of the books.
To read Glockner's entire article, click HERE.
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