
Public Anthropology Speaker Series
February 27 at 9:30 am - 10:30 am

The 2025 Public Anthropology Speaker Series opens with an engaging lecture featuring Dr. Emily Christina Murphy from UBC Okanagan’s Faculty of Creative and Critical Studies.
In her talk, New Graphic Genres and Online Reading Communities, Dr. Murphy traces a new genre of comics publishing—graphic biographies—using approaches from close reading, to computational analysis, to reception studies. Drawing from her background in literary studies, Dr. Murphy demonstrates how online reading communities shape ‘cultural memory’ and can shift our assumptions about publics, accessibility, technology, and representation.
Dr. Murphy’s research focuses on comics, literature, social media, embodiment, and modernist robots. She directs the ReMedia Infrastructure for Research and Creation at UBCO. Dr. Murphy co-edited Entwine: A Critical and Creative Companion to Teaching with Twine (Amherst College Press). Her in-progress book analyzes the new print comics genres in contemporary publishing.
This event is hosted and organized by the Collaborative + Experimental Ethnography Lab
Support is provided by the Anthropology Caucus of the Department of Community, Culture and Global Studies.