Dr. Catherine Parzynski, Montgomery County Community College Assistant Professor of History, (center) will moderate the "Issues and Insights" panel Tuesday, Oct. 20, which will include Dr. Harold William Halbert, MCCC Professor of English, (right) and Dr. Thomas M. Powers, MCCC Associate Professor of English. Image by Eric Devlin
Montgomery County Community College will take a deep dive into the pages of modern comic books to explore how censorship influenced their creation.
Join MCCC for the return of its “Issues and Insights” lecture series, Tuesday, Oct. 20 from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m. in the Advanced Technology Center Room 101 on the Blue Bell Campus, 340 DeKalb Pike, Blue Bell, PA 19422. The event is free and open to all and parking is free. The topic is “The Sacred and the Scraped: How Politics, Religion, and the Code Shaped Modern Comics.”
Dr. Catherine Parzynski, MCCC Assistant Professor of History, will moderate the panel, which will include Dr. Harold William Halbert, MCCC Professor of English, and Dr. Thomas M. Powers, MCCC Associate Professor of English.
“This discussion will center on the tension between artistic risk, social commentary, and industry censorship,” said Dr. Parzynski. “It will explore historical inflection points like the Comics Code Authority, the legendary editorial block of Swamp Thing #88, and the modern “cancellation” or pulling of comics over sensitive social and political themes.”
Dr. Thomas Kolsky, former MCCC History Professor, began hosting the “Issues & Insights” lecture series in 1986, although it did not officially take that name until 1999. The program’s purpose was to stimulate discussions about diverse topics, to invite the larger community to participate in an exchange of ideas and to share the academic talent of MCCC’s faculty as well as guest speakers.
Throughout the years, the programs covered a vast range of topics with more than 100 individual events. Some of the topics included: "The Modern Jewish Experience," "Focus on the Middle East," "The Reign of Error: The Marriage of Humor and Politics," "Vietnam and Iraq Wars Compared," "The Immigration Question," "Millennial Reflections 1999-2000," "Tony Auth on Cartoons," "Gibson's The Passion of the Christ," and "September 11, 2001," among others. Most recently, the series held the lecture “The Manosphere Exposed (Gender, Media, and Modern Masculinities).”
For more information about the upcoming panel, please contact Dr. Catherine Parzynski.