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‘Doonesbury does Iraq’: Garry Trudeau and the politics of an anti-war strip

This double-blind peer reviewed essay for the leading (international) journal in the field, combines close analysis of a comics text (Doonesbury) with new research into the ideological construction of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). It contributes to scholarly reassessments of cultural representations of the Iraq War by asking the question: what does it mean for an anti-war strip to focus on PTSD? The work is therefore situated at the meeting point between Cultural Studies, Comics Studies and Medical Studies. The ideas were tested at two keynote talks at international conferences: at the Imperial War Museum (subsequently podcast on Resonance FM, the Arts Council radio station) and Manchester Metropolitan University. These talks were billed as ‘special events’ because they represented the reuniting of Barker and Sabin (identified by the organisers as key figures at the foundation of Comics Studies).