FRIENDS OF ASOR WEBINARS
Drawing on History: Creating the Graphic Adaptation of 1177 BC.
Friends of ASOR present the next webinar in the 2023-2024 season on January 25, 2024, at 6:00 pm EST, presented by Dr. Eric Cline and Glynnis Fawkes. How does a cartoonist go about adapting a work of history, specifically Eric H. Cline’s 1177 BC The Year Civilization Collapsed? In this talk I will describe the process of interpreting Eric’s text in comics, an exercise where I repeatedly asked myself: how might I tell this story visually, and how can I put Eric’s words into the mouths of characters involved in the story?
This meant making historical figures (such as Ramses III) speak, as well as imagining characters for whom we have no record offering commentary and opinions. To guide the narrative, I introduced two new young characters, Pel (of the Sea Peoples) and Shesha, (an Egyptian scribe) who ask the central question of the book: Why after three prosperous centuries did the civilizations of the Eastern Mediterranean Bronze Age suddenly come to an end? Pel and Sesha are young teenagers, perhaps the same age as a young audience for the book, and although the book is for all ages, I have not simplified the arguments and information Eric presents in the original 1177 BC. When these characters joined the book, (Eric and I came up with them about 50 pages in) their quest gained a personal dimension, and allowed for play with their interactions with the material. Pel, too young to remember the Sea Peoples battles himself, wants to know why his grandfather keeps talking about the glory days before collapse. So why did it happen?
My background as an archaeological illustrator, and the several years I lived in Cyprus and Lebanon allowed me to travel in the region and visit many of the places featured in the book, from Medinet Habu to Ugarit to Mycenae. My interest in comics stems from a fascination with Egyptian art when I was young; the combination of drawing, text, and page composition that creates an immersive world. Working on this book felt as if Eric had built the playground that was the original 1177 BC, and I brought the characters there to play– if possible at the end of civilization!
The webinar will conclude with a live Q&A session.Ìý
Glynnis Fawkes was the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship to Cyprus where she published Archaeology Lives in Cyprus and Cartoons of Cyprus and has worked as an illustrator on archaeological projects in Greece, Cyprus, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey. Her comics have appeared on The New Yorker.com, The Comics Journal, Popula.com, and MuthaMagazine.com (for which she was nominated for an Ignatz Award). She is author/illustrator Charlotte Bronte Before Jane Eyre, Persephone’s Garden, and the minicomics Allé Egó and Greek Diary, both of which won medals at the Society of Illustrators’ MoCCA fest in NYC. She lives in Vermont and teaches at the Center for Cartoon Studies.
Eric H. Cline is Professor of Classics and Anthropology, the former Chair of the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and the current Director of the Capitol Archaeological Institute at George Washington University, in Washington DC. A National Geographic Explorer, NEH Public Scholar, Getty Scholar, and Fulbright Scholar with degrees from Dartmouth, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania, he is an active field archaeologist with more than 30 seasons of excavation and survey experience in Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Cyprus, Greece, Crete, and the United States, including ten seasons at Megiddo (1994-2014), where he served as co-director before retiring from the project in 2014, and another ten seasons at Tel Kabri, where he currently serves as Co-Director. He is the author or editor of twenty books and nearly one hundred articles; translations of his books have appeared in nineteen different languages.
This webinar will be recorded and all paid registrantsÌýwill be sent a link to view the recording.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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All proceeds from this webinar are used to fund scholarships for members as well as increasing ASOR’s online resources, which are free to the public.
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