Published: Nov. 2, 2022

Described as one of the most important graphic novelists working today, she is known for "Dykes to Watch Out For"and a famous test of gender representation in movies


Alison Bechdel, an American cartoonist and graphic novelist known for her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, will speak on the 񱦵 campus this month.

Alison Bechdel

At the top of the page: One of Bechdel's comic strips.Above:Alison Bechdel.

“An Evening With Alison Bechdel,” is scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 17, at 7 p.m. in the University Memorial Center Glenn Miller Ballroom. Tickets—which are $2.50 for students, $5 for faculty and staff and $7.50 for the general public—can be .

Bechdel, who has been described as one of the most important graphic novelists working today, is also the creator of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama, The Secret to Superhuman Strength and the now-famous “Bechdel Test.”

The Bechdel Test emanated from a Dykes to Watch Out For strip and is a measure of the representation of women in movies. In the strip, a character says she will watch a movie only if it has at least two women who talk to each other about a topic other than men.

Later, that metric became known as the Bechdel Test, yielding lists showing that, for instance, Breakfast at Tiffany’s fails the test, whereas movies gaining a passing grate include Frozen, Hidden Figures and Mad Max: Fury Road.

𳦳’s Fun Home is described as a graphic memoir of her coming of age with a closeted, gay father. The work was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and it won the Eisner—the most-prestigious award in the comics industry—for best reality-based work. Fun Home was adapted as a musical that won a Tony Award for Best Musical in 2015.

𳦳’s visit is supported by 񱦵’s Department of English, Graduate School, College of Arts and Sciences, and College of Engineering and Applied Science.