Alison Halsall
Associate Professor
Coordinator, CCY Studies
Office: Vanier College, 234
Phone: 416-736-2100 Ext: 33944
Email: ahalsall@yorku.ca
Media Requests Welcome
Alison Halsall's teaching and scholarly strengths are interdisciplinary and trans-generic, and she has won several teaching awards, including the 2017 Department of Humanities Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2010 Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence. She specializes in Victorian and modernist literatures, with a particular emphasis on Visual Cultures, which includes the study of paintings and illustrations, contemporary film, comics and graphic novels. In 2026 she became the first-ever Lewis Carroll Visiting Fellow at Christ Church College, University of Oxford. In 2022, she co-edited the collection, The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader (UP Mississippi), which won an Eisner Award for the Best Academic / Scholarly Work. Her monograph project, Growing Up Graphic: The Comics of Children in Crisis, an examination of the lived experiences of young people as represented in comics culture, was published by The Ohio State University Press (2023); it won the Children's Literature Association Honor Book award in 2024. Her scholarly collection, Taylor Swift: Storytelling, Identity, and Power in the Digital Age, is forthcoming with The Ohio State University Press.
Degrees
Ph.D, York UniversityMaster's of English, Carleton University
Bachelor of Arts (Highest Honours), Carleton University
Research Interests
- Winner of an Eisner Award for Best Scholarly / Academic Work for The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions - 2022
- Nominated for a LAMBDA Literary Award for The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader - 2022
- Department of Humanities Excellence in Teaching Award - 2017
- Nominated for LA&PS Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching - 2017
- Nominated for Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence - 2012
- Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence - 2010
- Children's Literature Association Honor Book Winner - 2024
Current Research Projects
-
Summary:
- Winner of an Eisner Award for Best Scholarly / Academic Work for The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader: Critical Openings, Future Directions - 2022
- Nominated for a LAMBDA Literary Award for The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader - 2022
- Department of Humanities Excellence in Teaching Award - 2017
- Nominated for LA&PS Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching - 2017
- Nominated for Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence - 2012
- Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence - 2010
- Children's Literature Association Honor Book Winner - 2024
My monograph focuses on graphic narratives for and about children and youth, from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, varied regions of the world, wide-ranging gender identities and levels of ability. All of the graphic texts that this project analyzes feature particular predicaments and challenges experienced by young people that can deepen young readers' sociopolitical understanding of the world and move them towards an awareness of social justice.
Description:The graphic texts that I have selected for this study remind readers that young people are political, and that they are capable of agency and power—even and especially in relation to adversity. These texts are designed to help readers understand themselves as they react to, and sometimes resist, worldly pressures.
Start Date:
- Month: Jan Year: 2018
End Date:
- Month: Oct Year: 2023
-
Summary:
The first of its kind, The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader will honour LGBTQ+ work that emerged from and was influenced by comics’ post-WWII convulsions and transformations, the emergence and flourishing of the underground and alternative comix movement, the expansion of voices and cultures represented within mainstream comics, and the history of LGBTQ+ liberation to become what nonetheless remains an underrepresented sub-category in comics scholarship: LGBTQ+ comics, their critical implications, their provocative current iterations, and their future directions.
Description:The aim of The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader is to provide a platform for sustained, theoretically rigorous thinking about the various social, economic, historical, cultural, ethical, affective, and pedagogical issues at work in LGBTQ+ comics and cartoons, from around the world.
Start Date:
- Month: Aug Year: 2018
End Date:
- Month: Dec Year: 2022
Collaborator: Jonathan Warren
-
Summary:
This is a special issue that collects some key papers from the 2017 IRSCL Conference, held at York University, Toronto, Canada.
Description:The selected papers reflect several theoretical changes that have occurred or are in the process of occurring in the interstices of childhood studies and children's literature, and that also represent dynamic approaches to the overall congress theme.
-
Summary:
Taylor Swift and Transmedial Storytelling examines one of the most influential cultural figures of the twenty-first century as both artist and “star text,” whose global impact is shaped through the dynamic interplay of music, media, fandom, and branding. Bringing together literary scholars, ethnographers, and musicologists, this collection positions Swift as a transmedial storyteller, whose narratives circulate across songs, music videos, social media platforms, live performances, and fan communities.
The volume explores how Swift’s carefully curated personae—from girl-next-door to feminist icon to “tortured poet”—generate powerful affective connections with audiences while also functioning as strategic marketing tools within a broader convergence culture. At the same time, contributors interrogate the participatory roles of fans as co-creators of meaning, examining how Swiftie communities engage in practices of interpretation, circulation, and critique across digital and physical spaces.
Attending to questions of feminism, authorship, nostalgia, and literary adaptation, Taylor Swift and Transmedial Storytelling ultimately reveals how Swift’s enterprise both reflects and reshapes contemporary media culture, illuminating the complex relationship between narrative, identity, and power in the digital age.
The Ohio State University Press, 2026
Growing Up Graphic: The Comics of Children in Crisis. Ohio State University Press, 2023.
The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader, edited by Halsall and Warren. UP of Mississippi 2022.
White Rose and the Red by Delia Alton (H.D.) Ed. Alison Halsall. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009.
The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel, edited by Hugo Frey, Jan Baetens, Fabrice Leroy. Cambridge UP, 2023.
The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader, edited by Halsall and Warren. UP of Mississippi, 2022.
“Gord Downie and Jeff Lemire’s Graphic Narrative Secret Path: Analysis of a Transmedia Adaptation.” Cultural and Creative Industries of Childhood and Youth. Eds. Valérie-Inés de La Ville, Pascale Garnier, and Gilles Brougère. Peter Lang Publishing, 2021, 273-89.
“Graphic Experiences of Immigration, Migration, and Diaspora: Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival' and Matt Huynh’s Interactive Graphic Adaptation of Nam Le’s ‘The Boat.’” Graphic Embodiments: Graphic Perspectives on Health and Embodiment. Eds. Lisa DeTora and Jodi Cressman. U Leuven Press, 2021, 61-73.
“Intersectionalities in Canadian LGBTQ Comics.” The LGBTQ Comics Studies Reader. Eds. Halsall and Warren. UP of Mississippi. [Under contract].
“Harry Potter and the Development of Narrative and Media Literacies.” Transmedia Harry Potter: Essays on Storytelling Across Platforms. Ed. Christopher Bell. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2019, 48-61.
“The Politics of Identity in Collins’s The Hunger Games and Roth’s Divergent.” Handmaids, Tributes, & Carers: Dystopian Females’ Roles and Goals. Ed. Myrna Santos. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. 52-71.
“’What is the use of a book… without pictures or conversations?’: Incorporating the Graphic Novel into the University Curriculum.” Teaching Graphic Novels in the English Classroom: Pedagogical Possibilities of Multimodal Literacy Engagement. Ed. Alissa Burger. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 87-101.
“Bigger Longer & Uncut: South Park and the Carnivalesque.” Taking South Park Seriously. Ed. Jeffrey Weinstock. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. 23-37.
“Disney's Frozen Franchise and Transmedia Adaptation.” The South Atlantic Review 84.1 (Spring 2019): 141-159.
“Playing with Space in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilogy and Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale: Remastered.” The Journal of Popular Culture 52.1 (2019): 117-136.
“Nobody’s Home: Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Its Visual Adaptations.” Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society 1.3 (Fall 2017): 334-353.
Special Issue of International Research in Children’s Literature (IRCL) on “Possible & Impossible Children: Children’s Literature and Childhood Studies.” 11.2 (December 2018): v-x. [Co-wrote introductory essay, “Editorial: ‘Possible’ and ‘Impossible’ Children” (50%), with Cheryl Cowdy.]
“Those ‘dreadful’ Victorians – Penny Dreadful as Neo-Victorian Speculative Fiction.” The Confidential Clerk 2 (2016): 95-114.
“’A Parade of Curiosities’: Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls as Neo-Victorian Pastiches.” The Journal of Popular Culture 48.2 (2015): 253-269.
“H. D. and the Victorian Spectres of White Rose and the Red.” College Literature 38.4 (Fall 2011): 115-133.
“Rendering Women: H.D.’s Revision of the Pre-Raphaelite ‘cult of youthful beauty.’” Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies 7 (2004): 43-59.
“Take my blood, not my money!: Vampires, Capital, and Class.” New Comparison 35-36 (Spring/Autumn 2003): 145-62.
“Pathos and Wizardry: Narrative Rhetoric in Harry Potter.” Canadian Journal of Rhetorical Studies 13 (September 2002): 39-50.
“Manipulating the Dystopia: Margaret Atwood’s Deliberative and Epideictic Rhetoric in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Canadian Journal of Rhetorical Studies 10 (September 1999): 81-96.
“Visualizing the Gothic in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Its Illustrated Adaptations.” Dialogues between Media, edited by Paul Ferstl. De Gruyter, 2021, pp. 123-142.
Upcoming Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2026 | AP/CCY4900 6.0 | A | CCY Work-Focused Placement Course | BLEN |
| Fall/Winter 2026 | AP/CCY4998 6.0 | A | The Child & the Book: Research Project | BLEN |
Alison Halsall's teaching and scholarly strengths are interdisciplinary and trans-generic, and she has won several teaching awards, including the 2017 Department of Humanities Excellence in Teaching Award and the 2010 Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence. She specializes in Victorian and modernist literatures, with a particular emphasis on Visual Cultures, which includes the study of paintings and illustrations, contemporary film, comics and graphic novels. In 2026 she became the first-ever Lewis Carroll Visiting Fellow at Christ Church College, University of Oxford. In 2022, she co-edited the collection, The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader (UP Mississippi), which won an Eisner Award for the Best Academic / Scholarly Work. Her monograph project, Growing Up Graphic: The Comics of Children in Crisis, an examination of the lived experiences of young people as represented in comics culture, was published by The Ohio State University Press (2023); it won the Children's Literature Association Honor Book award in 2024. Her scholarly collection, Taylor Swift: Storytelling, Identity, and Power in the Digital Age, is forthcoming with The Ohio State University Press.
Degrees
Ph.D, York UniversityMaster's of English, Carleton University
Bachelor of Arts (Highest Honours), Carleton University
Research Interests
Awards
Current Research Projects
-
Summary:
My monograph focuses on graphic narratives for and about children and youth, from diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds, varied regions of the world, wide-ranging gender identities and levels of ability. All of the graphic texts that this project analyzes feature particular predicaments and challenges experienced by young people that can deepen young readers' sociopolitical understanding of the world and move them towards an awareness of social justice.
Description:The graphic texts that I have selected for this study remind readers that young people are political, and that they are capable of agency and power—even and especially in relation to adversity. These texts are designed to help readers understand themselves as they react to, and sometimes resist, worldly pressures.
Project Type: FundedRole: Primary Investigator
Start Date:
- Month: Jan Year: 2018
End Date:
- Month: Oct Year: 2023
-
Summary:
The first of its kind, The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader will honour LGBTQ+ work that emerged from and was influenced by comics’ post-WWII convulsions and transformations, the emergence and flourishing of the underground and alternative comix movement, the expansion of voices and cultures represented within mainstream comics, and the history of LGBTQ+ liberation to become what nonetheless remains an underrepresented sub-category in comics scholarship: LGBTQ+ comics, their critical implications, their provocative current iterations, and their future directions.
Description:The aim of The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader is to provide a platform for sustained, theoretically rigorous thinking about the various social, economic, historical, cultural, ethical, affective, and pedagogical issues at work in LGBTQ+ comics and cartoons, from around the world.
Project Type: FundedRole: Co-editor
Start Date:
- Month: Aug Year: 2018
End Date:
- Month: Dec Year: 2022
Collaborator: Jonathan Warren
-
Summary:
This is a special issue that collects some key papers from the 2017 IRSCL Conference, held at York University, Toronto, Canada.
Description:The selected papers reflect several theoretical changes that have occurred or are in the process of occurring in the interstices of childhood studies and children's literature, and that also represent dynamic approaches to the overall congress theme.
Project Type: Self-FundedRole: Co-editor
-
Summary:
Taylor Swift and Transmedial Storytelling examines one of the most influential cultural figures of the twenty-first century as both artist and “star text,” whose global impact is shaped through the dynamic interplay of music, media, fandom, and branding. Bringing together literary scholars, ethnographers, and musicologists, this collection positions Swift as a transmedial storyteller, whose narratives circulate across songs, music videos, social media platforms, live performances, and fan communities.
The volume explores how Swift’s carefully curated personae—from girl-next-door to feminist icon to “tortured poet”—generate powerful affective connections with audiences while also functioning as strategic marketing tools within a broader convergence culture. At the same time, contributors interrogate the participatory roles of fans as co-creators of meaning, examining how Swiftie communities engage in practices of interpretation, circulation, and critique across digital and physical spaces.
Attending to questions of feminism, authorship, nostalgia, and literary adaptation, Taylor Swift and Transmedial Storytelling ultimately reveals how Swift’s enterprise both reflects and reshapes contemporary media culture, illuminating the complex relationship between narrative, identity, and power in the digital age.
Project Type: Self-FundedRole: Primary Investigator
All Publications
The Cambridge Companion to the American Graphic Novel, edited by Hugo Frey, Jan Baetens, Fabrice Leroy. Cambridge UP, 2023.
The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader, edited by Halsall and Warren. UP of Mississippi, 2022.
“Gord Downie and Jeff Lemire’s Graphic Narrative Secret Path: Analysis of a Transmedia Adaptation.” Cultural and Creative Industries of Childhood and Youth. Eds. Valérie-Inés de La Ville, Pascale Garnier, and Gilles Brougère. Peter Lang Publishing, 2021, 273-89.
“Graphic Experiences of Immigration, Migration, and Diaspora: Shaun Tan's 'The Arrival' and Matt Huynh’s Interactive Graphic Adaptation of Nam Le’s ‘The Boat.’” Graphic Embodiments: Graphic Perspectives on Health and Embodiment. Eds. Lisa DeTora and Jodi Cressman. U Leuven Press, 2021, 61-73.
“Intersectionalities in Canadian LGBTQ Comics.” The LGBTQ Comics Studies Reader. Eds. Halsall and Warren. UP of Mississippi. [Under contract].
“Harry Potter and the Development of Narrative and Media Literacies.” Transmedia Harry Potter: Essays on Storytelling Across Platforms. Ed. Christopher Bell. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2019, 48-61.
“The Politics of Identity in Collins’s The Hunger Games and Roth’s Divergent.” Handmaids, Tributes, & Carers: Dystopian Females’ Roles and Goals. Ed. Myrna Santos. Newcastle Upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2018. 52-71.
“’What is the use of a book… without pictures or conversations?’: Incorporating the Graphic Novel into the University Curriculum.” Teaching Graphic Novels in the English Classroom: Pedagogical Possibilities of Multimodal Literacy Engagement. Ed. Alissa Burger. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. 87-101.
“Bigger Longer & Uncut: South Park and the Carnivalesque.” Taking South Park Seriously. Ed. Jeffrey Weinstock. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008. 23-37.
The Ohio State University Press, 2026
Growing Up Graphic: The Comics of Children in Crisis. Ohio State University Press, 2023.
The LGBTQ+ Comics Studies Reader, edited by Halsall and Warren. UP of Mississippi 2022.
White Rose and the Red by Delia Alton (H.D.) Ed. Alison Halsall. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2009.
“Disney's Frozen Franchise and Transmedia Adaptation.” The South Atlantic Review 84.1 (Spring 2019): 141-159.
“Playing with Space in Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games Trilogy and Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale: Remastered.” The Journal of Popular Culture 52.1 (2019): 117-136.
“Nobody’s Home: Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Its Visual Adaptations.” Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society 1.3 (Fall 2017): 334-353.
Special Issue of International Research in Children’s Literature (IRCL) on “Possible & Impossible Children: Children’s Literature and Childhood Studies.” 11.2 (December 2018): v-x. [Co-wrote introductory essay, “Editorial: ‘Possible’ and ‘Impossible’ Children” (50%), with Cheryl Cowdy.]
“Those ‘dreadful’ Victorians – Penny Dreadful as Neo-Victorian Speculative Fiction.” The Confidential Clerk 2 (2016): 95-114.
“’A Parade of Curiosities’: Alan Moore’s The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Lost Girls as Neo-Victorian Pastiches.” The Journal of Popular Culture 48.2 (2015): 253-269.
“H. D. and the Victorian Spectres of White Rose and the Red.” College Literature 38.4 (Fall 2011): 115-133.
“Rendering Women: H.D.’s Revision of the Pre-Raphaelite ‘cult of youthful beauty.’” Leeds Centre for Victorian Studies 7 (2004): 43-59.
“Take my blood, not my money!: Vampires, Capital, and Class.” New Comparison 35-36 (Spring/Autumn 2003): 145-62.
“Pathos and Wizardry: Narrative Rhetoric in Harry Potter.” Canadian Journal of Rhetorical Studies 13 (September 2002): 39-50.
“Manipulating the Dystopia: Margaret Atwood’s Deliberative and Epideictic Rhetoric in The Handmaid’s Tale.” Canadian Journal of Rhetorical Studies 10 (September 1999): 81-96.
“Visualizing the Gothic in Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Its Illustrated Adaptations.” Dialogues between Media, edited by Paul Ferstl. De Gruyter, 2021, pp. 123-142.
Upcoming Courses
| Term | Course Number | Section | Title | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall/Winter 2026 | AP/CCY4900 6.0 | A | CCY Work-Focused Placement Course | BLEN |
| Fall/Winter 2026 | AP/CCY4998 6.0 | A | The Child & the Book: Research Project | BLEN |
Keele, Glendon and Markham Campus
Contact
(416) 736-2100
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