Nonfiction comics and comics journalism have emerged in the last three decades as an often-cited example of the power of the comics medium to transcend its roots in genre and speak to a wildly varied range of experiences and communities. Andy Warner offers a practitioner's insight into the establishment of the art form, its tools and its platforms, from the early roots of North American comics journalism in Joe Sacco's landmark Palestine through the establishment of The Nib and the meme wars of the 2016 presidential campaign and beyond.

The talk will span topics including the effect of tech money on new media, comic collectives in the Arab world, the use of comics internationally as an expression of soft power by the US State Department, and the history and creation of Warner's 2020 memoir "Spring Rain" about the 2005 outbreak of political violence and uprisings in Lebanon that led to its government collapsing and the withdrawal of the occupying Syrian military. 

Andy Warner, Cornell class of 2006, is the author of "Pests and Pets," "This Land is My Land," "Spring Rain," the NY Times Best Selling "Brief Histories of Everyday Objects." His books have been translated into Russian, Chinese, Korean, French and Spanish. He is a contributing editor at The Nib and teaches cartooning at Stanford University and The Animation Workshop in Denmark.

His work has been published widely, including by Slate, American Public Media, Popular Science, KQED, IDEO.org, The Center for Constitutional Rights, UNHCR, UNRWA, UNICEF, Google X and Buzzfeed.

He was a recipient of the 2018 and 2022 Berkeley Civic Arts Grant and the 2019, 2021 and 2023 Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park Artist-in-Residency.

He works in a garret room in South Berkeley, and comes from the sea.

This lecture is presented by the Department of Near Eastern Studies with support from the Department of Literatures in English,  Department of History of Art and Visual Studies at Cornell University, Society for the Humanities, and American Studies Program.