Team Feature: Meet Emily Ritter

Comics for academic disciplines is rapidly growing and becoming a popular medium for academic research. At SP Comics, not only do we have the privilege of being able to work with some of the top creative talents in comics, but we also get to work with some of the top researchers and scholars in various fields. And for us, that starts with our co-owner and COO, Emily H. Ritter, who is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University. Emily’s research centers on human rights and the strategic relationship between government repression and dissent activities. In this first entry for our new Team Feature blog series, we learn a little more about Emily’s love for comics and her fierce passion for her research, as well as how those two things work together!

Emily Ritter in her natural environment: Fierce Defender of The Christmas Multiverse!

Tell us about your history with comics. What’s the first comic you remember reading?

The first comics I remember reading were in the funny pages of the newspaper and Calvin and Hobbes books. Perfect kid reading. 

I didn’t become interested in and a fan of comics until I was dating Darick, starting in college. Following his lead, my first great graphic novel experience was Blankets by Craig Thompson. I didn’t know comics could be about regular lives until I read about his experience coming of age as a deeply religious person.

What are some of your all time favorite comic stories? And what are some things you like about them?

Black Hole by Charles Burns: I don’t tend to get into sci-fi, but I do love it when creative sci-fi ideas or dystopian frames allow us to think more deeply about humanity. I also adore the woodcut style of the (grotesque) illustrations. 

March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell. I assign this full set of books in my Politics of Human Rights course every semester. It conveys the inter-relationship between government repression and popular dissent in such subtle and important ways. The characters wrestle with choices over tactics, mobilization, publicity, membership...how to design a social movement and how those choices depend on what the government will do. It’s a perfect portrayal of what we call the politics of contention. 

Our Members Be Unlimited by Sam Wallman. Good gracious it’s a stunner, and the content about standing together to demand rights protection is so well-researched and expressed. It’s the kind of graphic novel I want to write. 

What is a comic you’ve read recently that you highly recommend?

The King of Bangkok by Claudio Sorpranzetti and Sara Fabbri. It’s based on decades of ethnographic work the author did in Thailand. They create characters that are amalgams of real people who experience poverty, prosperity, and the politics of a wildly shifting polity in Thailand. It depicts conditions, protests, and government crackdowns in a way that’s so human and intimate in its experience. The structure of the art shifts and changes depending on what’s happening in the story. 

Tell us a little bit about your work at SP Comics? What do you do with the company?

I work as the chief operating officer for the company. I do financial management, analysis, and help the CEO execute strategies for the company. And I’m happiest when I’m writing about the company or editing materials. 

What is your favorite SP Comics project?

I probably should say that my own book cover and illustrated insert are my favorites, but it’s honestly the RW-94 project with Christian Davenport.

The story is such a compelling one: It weaves a process of discovery about what happened during the Rwandan genocide with Christian’s self-discovery as a Black scholar studying repression in Africa. My favorite element is in Chapter 2, when the authors present a person’s testimony from court files using the form of collage. The technique hints at brokenness, realism without identity, and African traditions of piecing art together to make a whole.

Tell us a little bit about your work outside of SP Comics.

I’m a professor of political science, so my work outside of SPC involves teaching and researching topics of human rights and protests. Right now I’m working on a set of projects examining how governments disempower social movements using bureaucratic offices.

How does SP Comics inform or intersect with your other work?

Working with SPC has shifted my thinking about social scientific research to focus more on the story that’s being revealed in the process of research. I use mathematical models and data to identify patterns, but each observation in the data is a person or a group with real experiences. SPC helps me remember the importance of those stories when considering the whole. 

A social scientific process.

Emily’s passion for comics and her research in the field of political science has allowed her to turn SP Comics into a place that takes scholarship in various fields seriously with a desire to communicate the ideas of the scholars we work with into intriguing narratives with captivating art.

Are you a scholar with a passion to reach the public with your work? Check out our portfolio and email us to start the discussion about a comic!