Research presentation by Dr. Mike Kugler
When:
Thursday, Nov 18, 2010
Time:
7:00 PM
Where:
VPH 313, Orange City, IA
Contact:
Dr. Thomas Holm, Professor of Music
712-707-7065, tholm@nwciowa.edu
712-707-7065, tholm@nwciowa.edu
More:
Every year, the Faculty Development Committee funds scholarship by faculty and faculty/students, and during the following year we invite the researchers to present the results of their scholarship to the Northwestern community. What was Professor Kugler’s research? In his own words:
“A Fitting Death for Unbelievers: The Comic Strip Imagination of a Rural Nebraska Boy.”
In a small Midwestern town, a lonely but gifted only child began to draw cartoon animals. The Second World War gave him a backdrop for his fantasies of bipedal animals, honorable frogs fighting a similar just war against cruel toads. Over time the cartoons became experiments in further tales of horror, violence and dark humor.
That adolescent from Lexington, Nebraska, was my father.
I will offer a a microhistorical explanation for Jimmy Kugler’s cartoons. I’ll concentrate on the cartoons as well as the fragmentary evidence of his childhood and life in the rural Midwest during the 1930s and 1940s. The cartoons are a small window into the imagination of a Midwestern adolescent during World War II. He translated his world’s mass entertainment with the license given him by the coverage of the war. At such a time the anarchistic, disruptive character of cartoons particularly appealed to such a young man.
Please join us to hear from Professor Kugler. Refreshments will be served.
“A Fitting Death for Unbelievers: The Comic Strip Imagination of a Rural Nebraska Boy.”
In a small Midwestern town, a lonely but gifted only child began to draw cartoon animals. The Second World War gave him a backdrop for his fantasies of bipedal animals, honorable frogs fighting a similar just war against cruel toads. Over time the cartoons became experiments in further tales of horror, violence and dark humor.
That adolescent from Lexington, Nebraska, was my father.
I will offer a a microhistorical explanation for Jimmy Kugler’s cartoons. I’ll concentrate on the cartoons as well as the fragmentary evidence of his childhood and life in the rural Midwest during the 1930s and 1940s. The cartoons are a small window into the imagination of a Midwestern adolescent during World War II. He translated his world’s mass entertainment with the license given him by the coverage of the war. At such a time the anarchistic, disruptive character of cartoons particularly appealed to such a young man.
Please join us to hear from Professor Kugler. Refreshments will be served.
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