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Decolonizing Benjamin Franklin House Through Comics: Reflections and Potential

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How do the pressing contemporary challenges to morality and responsibility with regard to equality prompt us to rethink the prevalent colonial texts and representations in the heritage sector? This chapter explores how a comics-based research methodology can help map the intangible colonial traces in Benjamin Franklin House by focussing on one of its marginalised eighteenth-century enslaved residents, a runaway boy called John King and his quest for freedom. Exploring the idea of museums without borders through comics on the move and runaway comics, I promote unbound visions of slavery. In so doing, I propose that cartographic comics approaches as routes for research enquiry into the layered pasts of museums can help decolonise and democratise them as important sites of learning about slavery. Comics in combination with maps carry great interactive and meaning-making potential in terms of audience engagement and offer numerous unmapped terrains for reflective explorations, especially regarding creative decolonial efforts.

Keywords: Benjamin Franklin ; Benjamin Franklin House ; Colonialism ; Comics as Maps ; Comics-based Research Methodology ; Decolonial Resistance ; Decolonising History ; Enslaved ; Freedom Seeker ; John King ; Marginalised Histories ; Museums without Borders ; Runaway Boy ; Runaway Comics

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Decolonizing Benjamin Franklin House Through Comics: Reflections and Potential
Intellect , 37 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1386/9781789389135_5
/content/books/9781789389135.c03
/content/books/9781789389135.c03
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References

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     [Google Scholar]
  2. Aurell, J . (2015). Rethinking historical genres in the twenty-first century. Rethinking History, 19(2), 145–157.
     [Google Scholar]
  3. Benjamin Franklin House. (2019). Franklin & the house. https://benjaminfranklinhouse.org/the-house-benjamin-franklin/
  4. Benjamin Franklin House. (2021). The house today. https://benjaminfranklinhouse.org/the-house-benjamin-franklin/the-house-today/
  5. Bredehoft, T. A. (2006). Comics architecture, multidimensionality, and time: Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The smartest kid on earth. MFS Modern Fiction Studies, 52(4), 869–890.
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  6. Bressey, C. (2013). Contesting the political legacy of slavery in England's country houses: A case study of Kenwood House and Osborne House. In M. Dresser & A. Hann (Eds.), Slavery and the British country house (pp. 114–122). English Heritage.47
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  7. Chute, H. (2008). Comics as literature? Reading graphic narrative. PMLA, 123(2), 452–465.
     [Google Scholar]
  8. Cubitt, G. (2012). Museums and slavery in Britain: The bicentenary of 1807. In A. L. Araujo (Ed.), Politics of memory: Making slavery visible in the public space (pp. 159–177). Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
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     [Google Scholar]
  10. Drayton, R. (2019). Rhodes must not fall? Statues, postcolonial ‘heritage’ and temporality. Third Text, 33(4–5), 651–666.
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  12. Giblin, J. , Ramos, I. , & Grout, N. (2019). Dismantling the master's house: Thoughts on representing empire and decolonizing museums and public spaces in practice. Third Text, 33(4–5), 471–486.
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     [Google Scholar]
  14. Goskar, T. (2020). Small museums should spearhead drive to decolonise museum practice. https://www.museumsassociation.org/museums-journal/opinion/2020/12/small-museums-should-spearhead-drive-to-decolonise-museum-practice/
  15. Harvey, K. L. (2016). Envisioning the past: Art, historiography and public history. Cultural and Social History, 12(4), 1–27.
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  16. Janes, R. R. (2016). Museums without borders: Selected writings of Robert R. Janes. Routledge.
     [Google Scholar]
  17. Kuttner, P. J. , Weaver-Hightower, M. B. , & Sousanis, N. (2020). Comics-based research: The affordances of comics for research across disciplines. Qualitative Research, 21(2), 195–214.
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  18. McCloud, S. (1993). Understanding comics: The invisible art. Harper.
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  19. Moore, A. (2009). Maps as comics, comics as maps. International Cartographic Association.
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  21. Nash, G. B. (2006). Franklin and slavery. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 150(4), 618–635.
     [Google Scholar]
  22. Newman, S. (2019). Freedom-seeking slaves in England and Scotland, 1700–1780. English Historical Review, CXXXIV, 570, 1136–1168.
     [Google Scholar]
  23. Noise of Art. (2020). Benjamin Franklin, the lady and a runaway enslaved boy named King. https://noiseofart.org/2020/10/27/poem-benjamin-franklin-the-lady-and-a-runaway-enslaved-boy-named-king-by-h-e-ross/
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  25. Peterle, G . (2019). Comics and maps? A cartoGraphic essay. http://livingmaps.review/journal/index.php/LMR/article/view/185/362
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  27. Spread the Word. (2021). Runaways announced: History, storytelling and escape from slavery in 17th and 18th Century London. https://www.spreadtheword.org.uk/runaways-announced-history-storytelling-and-escape-from-slavery-in-17th-and-18th-century-london/48
  28. Turchi, P. (2004). Maps of the imagination: The writer as cartographer. Trinity UP.
  29. University of Glasgow. (n.d). Runaway slaves in Britain: Bondage, freedom and race in the eighteenth century. https://www.runaways.gla.ac.uk/
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