Rider University professor Sheena Howard became the first African American woman to win an Eisner Award for her first book July 25.
Howard was awarded for her book, Black Comics: Politics of Race and Representation at the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards ceremony held during Comic-Con July 25 in San Diego, Calif. Howard won for Best Scholarly/Academic Work.
Eisner awards are considered the Oscars for comics and are the highest acknowledgement one can receive in the industry.
The book is a collection of critical perspectives on how black comic artists have represented and explored the African American experience. Howard accepted the award along with the book’s second editor, Ronald L. Jackson II, a faculty member of McMicken College of Arts and Sciences at the University of Cincinnati.
An assistant professor in Rider’s Department of Communication and Journalism since 2011, Howard received a summer research fellowship her first year at the school to complete Black Comics.
“The goal is to call attention to the salient themes around race, gender and representation prevalent in historical and contemporary comics,” she said in a statement.
Black Comics grew out of Howard’s dissertation at Howard University, The Continuity and Extension of African-American Communication Dynamics through Black Comic Strips, an analysis of Aaron McGruder’s Boondocks comic strip. Since its publication, the book has attracted enough attention that Howard regularly appears at conventions and other comic-book gatherings.
The nomination and resulting win has propelled her — an entrant into the world of comics — into the ranks of its most acclaimed artists, writers and creators. Far from a lifelong fan, Howard had never owned a comic until around 2007. She cites the sheer amount of material as one barrier to entering the field. Following Batman or Spiderman on their superhero adventures has spawned thousands of editions over the decades.
She started with The Boondocks, a daily strip that ran from 1996 to 2006. McGruder originally wrote and drew the strip, which featured two African American boys assimilating to the suburbs. It often addressed politics and popular culture and, along the way, attracted a big audience that crossed racial lines.
The humor was savvy enough that readers of different races were often laughing at the same jokes but for different reasons, Howard says. She became curious about how the strip achieved its effect and its popularity. The Cartoon Network adapted The Boondooks for television and the show premiered on Adult Swim in 2005.
Since earning her doctorate in communication and culture from Howard, she received several accolades, including the American Association of Blacks in Higher Education’s Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation award and the 2010 Doctoral Dissertation award from the National Communication Association. She earned her master’s degree in graphic design from the New York Institute of Technology and completed her undergraduate degree in business administration with a concentration in marketing from the Hagan School of Business at Iona College.
An expert on race, representation, politics and sexual identity negotiation, she’s also written two other books, Black Queer Identity Matrix and Critical Articulations of Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation, which were published in 2014.
Howard has begun initial talks with the publisher of Black Comics, Bloomsbury, for a follow up.
She appeared at the awards ceremony at Comic-Con from July 24-27 in San Diego, Calif. About 130,000 fans attend the annual convention to celebrate comics, movies, television and video games. To attend Comic-Con, Howard flew from Denver, Colo., where she was participating in a two-week event at the HERS Institute to promote women’s leadership roles in higher education.
More information is online at rider.edu.
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