Charles Hatfield

Charles Hatfield is a Professor of English at California State University, Northridge, where he has taught for twenty-one years and counting. He is the author of Hand of Fire: The Comics Art of Jack Kirby (2012), Alternative Comics (2005), and numerous essays and reviews; coeditor of Comics Studies: A Guidebook (2020) and The Superhero Reader (2013); and curator of Comic Book Apocalypse: The Graphic World of Jack Kirby(CSUN Art Galleries, 2015), one of the largest exhibitions ever of Kirby’s original art. Hatfield has served as a cofounder and the first president (2014-2018) of the Comics Studies Society, and on the executive boards of the MLA Comics and Graphic Narratives Forum (2010-2014) and the International Comic Arts Forum (1997-2009). In 2005, he founded CSU Northridge’s popular course, Comics and Graphic Novels, an introduction to comics studies, which he has taught every year since. In addition, he has taught comics in myriad other courses and situations, in and out of school. In 2014, Hatfield won CSUN’s Preeminent Scholarly Publications Award, and in 2018 the Comics Studies Society established the annual Charles Hatfield Book Prize. 

Courses Previously Taught

The Social and Material Lives of Comic Art, or, How Comics Get Around, 2023