Comics More Than Words: Leo Chu

Speaker(s): Leo Chu (PhD Student, University of Cambridge)

The Comics: More Than Words research group will be hosting Leo Chu, a PhD student at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University, who will be discussing the acclaimed anime television series Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

In this presentation, Leo Chu will use a variety of literary critical methods: neo-noir criticism, feminist epistemology and studies of technoscience, and discussion of utopia/dystopia imagination. Focusing on the depiction of desire and hope, as two interconnected but potentially conflicting concepts, he presents different philosophical edifices related to them as one central narrative tension. He will also show how the main characters struggle against a future and ethics imposed from the standpoint of dominant social groups while affirming the possibility and importance to have hope for futures that are yet to be imagined.