Esther Claudio

Postdoctoral Fellow

Esther Claudio is a Postdoctoral Fellow for the “Racial Reckoning through Comics” Mellon-Sawyer Seminar at the University of Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Hispanic Literatures from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research studied the public articulation of trauma in Spanish graphic novels and her interests include gender studies, critical race theory, urban studies and visual culture. She co-founded the comicsgrid.com, one of the leading open access comics journals, and the Hispanic Comics Studies Collective. She co-edited On the Edge of the Panel: Essays on Comics Criticism (2015), and she is part of the editorial board of Studies in Comics and CuCo: Cuadernos de Comics. She features in the PBS 2023 Emmy-nominated Love & Rockets: The Great American Comic Book documentary and she is proud to have written the Foreword for the English version of Ana Penyas’s We’re All Fine, published by Fantagraphics (2023). When she’s not entangled with academic work, she enjoys the company of her friends, volleyball, drawing, memes and volunteering at the dogs shelter.