Øyvind Vågnes is working on a book tentatively titled Images from the Dark Side: Picturing the War on Terror (with chapters on Errol Morris, Joe Sacco, Jenny Holzer, and Nina Berman, among others). He defended his doctoral dissertation on the cultural history of the Zapruder film in 2007, and a book, Zaprudered: the Journey of Zapruder's Images is due out from Texas University Press in 2011. Other forthcoming publications include "Showing Silence: On David Small's Stitches," in Studies in Comics 1.2.2010, and "Becoming an Image of Pain: On Self-immolations," in Frances Guerin, ed., On Not Looking: Essays on Images and Viewers. Among recent publications are articles on the subject of witnessing and 9/11; with Asbjørn Grønstad he is the co-editor of Coverscaping: Discovering Album Aesthetics (Museum Tuscalunum Press, 2009). With Grønstad he is also co-editing the new peer-reviewed journal Ekfrase: Nordisk Tidsskrift for Visuell Kultur. Research interests include: visual studies, documentary theory, graphic novels, North American fiction, ekphrasis. In 2001-2002 Vågnes was a Fulbright Fellow at Georgetown University, Washington, DC, and in the spring of 2004 a visiting scholar at the University of Washington, Seattle. He has published two novels in Norwegian, Ingen skal sove i natt (2003) and Ekko (2005), and a third, Sekundet før, will be out in October 2010.
Email: ov@nomadikon.net