Announcement

The Comics Studies Society is proud to announce the finalists for each of our seven prizes for 2025! Many of these prizes had numerous strong nominees. Congratulations to the finalists!

Winners will be announced in June.

Shortlists for the 2025 CSS Awards

The Charles Hatfield Book Prize

• Samantha Langsdale, Searching for Feminist Superheroes: Gender, Sexuality, and Race in Marvel (University of Texas Press)
• James Donahue, Indigenous Comics and Graphic Novels (University Press of Mississippi)
• James Scorer, Latin American Comics in the Twenty-First Century: Transgressing the Frame (University of Texas Press)
• Daniel Worden, Petrochemical Fantasies: The Art and Energy of American Comics (Ohio State University Press)
• Patrick L. Hamilton, George Perez (University Press of Mississippi)

The CSS Article Prize

• Derek Lee, “Is Psylocke Asian? The Racial Fantasy and Ambiguity of an Uncanny Oriental” (Inks)
• Nicole Dib, “Who Benefits from Your Ignorance? Visualizing Black (Super)Heroism and Refuting Respectability Politics in Victor LaValle’s Destroyer” (Inks)
• Brian Flota, Mara L. Thacker, and Jason Larsen, “Sustainable Futures for Comics Collecting” (Technical Services Quarterly)
• Aaron Kashtan, “Why They’re Censoring Comics Again” (Inks)
• Lan Dong, “Multilingual and Multicultural Childhood: Robin Ha’s Almost American Girl” (Journal of Literary Multilingualism)

The Gilbert Seldes Prize for Public Scholarship

• Asher Elbein, “The Judgment Of Magneto” (https://defector.com/the-judgment-of-magneto)
• Felipe Rodolpho Henriksen, “Batman patiens: Patience in Batman: Year One (1987)” (https://www.vaultofculture.com/vault/feature/hendriksen/batmanpatiens)
• Tegan O’Neil, “Tegan Reads A Comic Book” (https://www.instagram.com/whenwillthehurtingstop/)
• Zach Rabiroff, “The Rashomon of Bill Jemas: Four Portraits of a Marvel Age” (execerpt available here: https://www.tcj.com/the-rashomon-of-bill-jemas-four-portraits-of-a-marvel-age-the-comics-journal-310-preview/)
• John A. Walsh et al.. “Comic Book Paratexts” (https://biblicon.org/cbp/)

The CSS Edited Book Prize

• Jonathan Najarian, ed. Comics and Modernism: History, Form, and Culture (University Press of Mississippi)
• Jim Casey and Brandon Christopher, eds. Shakespeare and Comics: Negotiating Cultural Value (Bloomsbury)
• Georgiana Banita and Lee Konstantinou, eds. Artful Breakdowns: The Comics of Art Spiegelman (University Press of Mississippi)
• Brian Flota and Kate Morris, eds. Comic Books, Special Collections, and the Academic Library (Association of College Research Libraries)
• Margaret C. Flinn, ed. Drawing (in) the Feminine: Bande Dessinée and Women (The Ohio State University Press)
• Jim Coby and Joanna Davis-McElligatt, eds. Boom! Splat! Comics and Violence (University Press of Mississippi)

The CSS Dissertation Prize

• Adrienne Resha, From Superman to Sana Amanat: Alienation, Assimilation, and American Superhero Comics, 1938 to Present (The College of William and Mary)
• Christian Hines, #THEKIDSAREALRIGHT: Interrogating and Enacting Youth Empowerment Via Comics Pedagogies in a High School Book Club (The Ohio State University)
• Rolando Rubalcava, The Comics of COVID-19: A Narrative Medicine Reading of the Comics Produced During the Pre-Vaccine Period of COVID-19 (The Ohio State University)

The Hillary Chute Award for Best Graduate Student Paper

• David Stull, “Superhero American Indians in Comic Books”
• Ishita Sehgal, “Memory, Colors and Gutters: Reading Graphic Memoirs
• Marissa A. Zerangue, “‘So you thought you would exploit another person’s tragedy’: Mystery, Gender, and Race in Mat Johnson’s Incognegro: A Graphic Mystery”

The Frederick Luis Aldama Award for Emerging BIPOC Comics Scholar

• Adrienne Resha (University of Virginia)