UAlberta Arts Professor Chris Reyns-Chikuma chosen for annual Faculty Exchange Program with University of Innsbruck

04 February 2016

Dr. Chris Reyns-Chikuma is Professor of French and Francophone Cultural Studies in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta. After completing an M.A in Japanese Studies, a PH.D on Holocaust literature, and a book on "Néo-japonisme in France," he started to work more and more on Bande Dessinée"/Comics/Manga. His recent research centres around [non-]diversity in the BD world.

He will be in Innsbruck from May 21st to June 21st teaching the course on Superheroes that he taught this Fall semester at the U of A entitled "From Greek Mythology to Geek Multiculturalism." But he will adapt it to, on the one hand, the Austrian-European students, by emphasizing the German-Austrian, European and global contexts of some Superhero stories such as the popular myth of "Faust," "Superman against Hitler" (1940), "Batman in Berlin" (2011), "Batman in Paris" (2012) "Batman in Tokyo" (2012); and on the other hand, he will also emphasize the Canadian connection adding O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim as a textbook and many references to Canadian superheroes (Captain Canuck, Captain Kébec, Alpha Flight, Essex County, ….).

Of course, in his spare time, he is also planning to re-visit this beautiful region (hiking, eating-drinking, hiking, eating-drinking….) that he visited when he was 12 within another exchange program with his Belgian middle school a long time ago. Full circle!