Located in southwestern Virginia; Washington County is a land of fertile grounds and rolling hills along the Holston River. Hardy pioneers settled this land in the mid- to late-1700s and tamed the wilderness to establish communities; churches; and schools. Officially formed in 1776; the county was named after Gen. George Washington for his fame and accomplishments before he became president. From the tribes of its original inhabitants to the introduction of the great railways and commerce; Washington County was a major gateway to the West along the Great Wagon Road and saw thousands of settlers and goods pass through on the way to the uncharted lands of the United States. With over 200 images; Washington County provides an intricate visit to the yesteryear of this rural region with scenes of the Virginia Creeper trains and railroads and the larger communities of Damascus; Meadowview; and Glade Spring; as well as early photographs of the smaller communities such as Benhams; Clinchburg; Mendota; and Hayters Gap.
#257364 in eBooks 2010-11-22 2010-11-22File Name: B0097D7L7G
Review
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. I wanted to love it more.By Laura JonesMostly insightful and well-founded. but I was disappointed to see such a limited selection of texts- yes. graphic memoir is fantastic. particularly in terms of providing a venue for female narrative on experience. but many of her points apply at least as well to graphic fiction. but she doesnt really address that aspect.0 of 0 people found the following review helpful. She knows her stuff and writes clearly and engagingly. ...By Mrs. Janet F. HarperShe knows her stuff and writes clearly and engagingly. It is firmly based on academic research but very much about the experience of reading graphic narratives. It will no doubt become a classic.4 of 4 people found the following review helpful. Doesnt over-simplify or over-complexify womens writing. feminism. experimental literature. or comics!By Anna Joy SpringerGraphic Women is ingeniously curatorial. focusing on the art of five autobiographical cartoonists: Aline Komisky-Crumb. Phoebe Gloekner. Lynda Barry. Marjane Satrapi. and Allison Bechdel. These artists works all focus on experiences of violent. often sexual and usually gender-based trauma. Through their comics. Chute investigates the relationships between contemporary cross-genre aesthetics. memory. trauma. and the pleasures and dangers of being a woman artist. Their stories all reenact violent memories. but the characters are by no means reduced to messy-confessional meat puppets animated by hulking wound-puppeteers. In fact. the very fact that the book exists shows that the protagonist lived to tell the tale - and to render it with her own hands. The fact of author embodiment is always implicit in autobiographical graphic narratives. and all aspects of the visual style of these comics remind the reader that the work is crafted by the hand of the storys visually present protagonist. The work has been drawn for an audience. not for the artist herself. The artist may. in fact. depict herself speaking directly to the reader. This trick. combined with the fact that readers determine pacing and closure (because of the gutter and the closure required from text/image juxtaposition). is possible only in comics.Chute describes comics artists formal and thematic interactions as theoretically sophisticated. experimental. and accessible; an exhilarating achievement:"[C]omics is a powerful form precisely because it is also invested in accessibility. in print. Comics works can deliberately disrupt the surface texture of their own pages--often invoking aesthetic practices of the historical avant-garde--yet they model a post-avant-garde praxis in the very fact of their popular availability. in the "mass appeal" of the medium . . . It is because comics is both a sophisticated and experimental form. and because it has a popular history. that the current work in the field feels so hopeful and invigorating. (11)"The fact that Chute mentions "accessibility" and "experimental form." in the same breath and not as mutually exclusive concepts is a huge reason Graphic Women is such an innovative. important contribution to the growing field of comics studies.
