Greg Rucka’s Stumptown, (debuted as a limited series for Oni Press in 2009 and 2012, became an ongoing title as of 2014, and has been adapted for a television series that is coming to the ABC network), explores non-traditional and dangerous roles that are occupied by women. While this is a hallmark of his work, Stumptown particularly focuses on the tension a woman feels when she sheds traditional markers of femininity in order to exist in a male dominated milieu. Stumptown’s heroine, Dex (short for Dexedrine) Parios, is a female detective, evocative of Jim Rockford in the 1970s television show, The Rockford Files. Dex takes on difficult cases that force her into hazardous situations that risk not only her own safety, but also that of her friends and family. Dex is not a stereotypically feminine woman, but she has to attempt to balance her work life with her family obligations since she is the primary caregiver for her brother Ansel who has Down’s Syndrome. Dex bounces back and forth between the gritty world of her cases and the need to be maternal and nurturing. This is not a divide that she often navigates well, and the larger paper explores the multiple roles that Dex occupies, the degrees to which she performs (or fails to perform) them adequately, and the cultural implications for women balancing similar divisions between career and family.
About the presenterJennifer Swartz-Levine
Jennifer Swartz-Levine is the Dean of Arts, Education, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Lake Erie College in Painesville, Ohio, where she also is a Professor of English and the Director of the Writing Center. Swartz-Levine’s work focuses on gender and comics.