A research article by Harlen Makemson, assistant professor in the School of Communications, has been published in the refereed journal Media History Monographs. The article, “One Misdeed Evokes Another: How Political Cartoonists Used ‘Scandal Intertextuality’ Against Presidential Candidate James G. Blaine,” examines cartoonists’ portrayals of Blaine and concludes that artists borrowed not only from previous political scandals and debates about cultural norms of the time but also from each other. The article also studies how cartoonists such as Thomas Nast and Joseph Keppler differed in their approaches by using the concept of “scandal intertextuality,” which acknowledges that current scandal often is understood through the prism of past scandal.
The article is volume 7, number 2 of the online journal and can be accessed at: