Storied Objects: A Graphic Narrative Reflection on Material Metaphors and Digital Writing

Comics and Graphic Narratives

Series Editors: Sergio Figueiredo, Jason Helms, and Anastasia Salter

STORIED OBJECTS is a comics-form monograph that investigates metaphor in digital scholarship through autoethnographic narrative and reflective multimodal methods. ERIN KATHLEEN BAHL examines material metaphor as rhetorical invention strategy through a deep dive into one creator's approach to designing digital scholarship. Her investigation guides readers through illustrative tours of the metaphor-based origin stories behind three published academic webtexts. Bahl offers practical tools for tracking how metaphors shape design and argument together at evolving stages of a project's development, as well as reflective frameworks to inspire readers' own creative-critical practices. Overall, Storied Objects illuminates the importance of systematically reflecting on material metaphors that guide our brainstorming processes because they fundamentally influence how our ideas take shape.

As a comics-form academic book exploring the creative craft of designing ideas, Storied Objects builds on foundations laid by scholar-creators such as Scott McCloud (Understanding Comics), Nick Sousanis (Unflattening), Kay Sohini (Drawing Unbelonging), Sally Pirie (The Good, the Bad, and the Data), and Jason Helms (Rhizcomics).

Erin Kathleen Bahl is Associate Professor of English (Applied and Professional Writing) at Kennesaw State University in Atlanta, Georgia, as well as the department's inaugural Social Media & Branding Coordinator. Her work focuses on creating knowledge, telling stories, and designing for access via digital scholarship, webcomics, folklore, and interactive narrative. Her scholarship includes publications in Kairos, Computers and Composition Online, enculturation, The Journal of American Folklore, Technical Communication Quarterly, and The Digital Review, as well as several edited collections. Her creative work includes digital comics published by the Smithsonian's Folklife Magazine, Graphic RHM, Vermont Folklife Center, Variant Literature, and Through the Twisted Woods. Her digital dissertation on webtexts and invention won the 2018 Hugh Burns Distinguished Dissertation Award. Her 2022 illustrated webtext on audio description (co-authored with Margaret Price) received Kairos's Best Webtext Award and was selected for the Best of the Journals in Rhetoric and Composition 2023. Along with Chris Andrews, she is co-editor for Kairos.