Muslim Women’s Representation as Comic Book Superheroes
Discourse is important. It helps develop and maintain truth, it fosters the spread of ideology and knowledge, and it comes in a multitude of forms and mediums. Visual communication is one of these forms and is understood using the skill of what is called visual literacy. Using visual and media literacy, we're going to compare and contrast two different, Muslim women superheroes from the Marvel Comics franchise. These two women, Sooriya Qadir (left) and Kamala Khan (right), are juxtaposed through the ways in which either character disrupts or reproduces the harmful, orientalist tropes of Muslim women that seem to persist among western media. We'll be critiquing their representation based on 3 things: 1) the visual presentation of their overall superhero costume and outfit 2) how the visuals of their first introductions set the stage for the rest of their storyline 3) the r...