2021 Symposium for Student Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

My presentation will be a blend of both creative and academic, as both parts inform one another. The creative part of my presentation will be a PowerPoint showcasing chapters from my graphic novel, Galeton Ghoul: an American Manga, which takes place in my hometown of Galeton, Pennsylvania. I will provide excerpts to discuss the process of the story's creation, from the daydreams to the finished piece.My graphic novel centers on a female protagonist who works for an agency that hunts ghouls to keep humans safe, and along the way finds a town where being openly racist is tolerated (maybe at times encouraged), and people who are accepting are rare and hard to come by. The town has been plagued with ghouls for the last several years, however, things have only ramped up since a Muslim family moved to the area. She needs to find the actual ghoul terrorizing the town before a Muslim family gets lynched. These issues are a part of the central plot of the story, and are relevant issues in rural communities today.The academic, scholarly part of my presentation will be a critical analysis of the famous Japanese manga series, Tokyo Ghoul and its sequel Tokyo Ghoul:re, written and drawn by Sui Ishida. In my paper, I will be examining issues of intertextuality, as Ishida frequently references mid-twentieth-century novels like The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai, Demian by Herman Hesse, and most notably explicit references to Kafka's Metamorphosis. I will be mainly focusing on how Metamorphosis provides a narrative arch for Tokyo Ghoul.