Haunted spaces: Visualising the witch in expanded comics

This practice-informed study is about new ways of engaging with narratives of witch histories. Specifically, it explores the ways that site-specific stories of folkloric witches can be told using papercut as form of expanded comics, using walking and collaboration as creative process. The two papercut stories in the creative output sit at the intersection of story (the witches), people (the collaborators) and place (the spaces that house these stories), each component haunting the edges of the others. The interdisciplinary elements that comprise this thesis are conceptualised as haunted spaces to allow consideration of the effect and affect of the past within the present, be that the figure of the witch, the use of papercut and silhouette, the comics page, walking, or the collaborative process.

The thesis is structured into three primary sections. Section One establishes context by interrogating existing scholarship of haunting to construct a theoretical lens that facilitates a new means of looking at the core themes that follow. In the application of haunting-as-lens, I first look at how the witch is conceptualised, then specifically on visual representations, demonstrating the ways the figure of the witch is inherently haunted by existing stories. The second section focuses on process and product by exploring the potential for papercut to visually tell stories such as these that have an innately haunted quality, followed by the importance and use of walking as creative method that foregrounds engagement with story through relationship to place. The two papercut narratives operate at the boundaries of comics, and each are given their own chapter for analysis. The final section provides evaluation and reflection through its own haunted lens.

Comics studies is a dynamic discipline with rapidly emergent scholarship, yet relatively little attention has been paid to experimental, peripheral forms of the medium, what I term expanded comics. Papercut as a tool for visual storytelling provides opportunities to explore its use in expanded comics through practiceinformed enquiry, enabling contributions to knowledge within the field. Collaboration in comics production is commonplace but has only recently asserted its presence in doctoral studies; this thesis also contributes to innovations in practice-informed doctoral processes.

This study sits in dialogue with the current revival of interest in witches, witchcraft, witch histories, folklore and the occult, echoing contemporary uses of walking as a means of engagement with story. The papercuts offer a new and energised way of visually articulating these stories, as well as underscoring their continued importance and resonance.