UND Digital Press releases expanded version of “The Beast: Making a Living on a Dying Planet”
The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota has collaborated with Ontario-based Ad Astra Comix to release a new expanded version of the provocative graphic novel, The Beast: Making a Living on a Dying Planet.
The Beast, written by Nicole Burton and Hugh Goldring and edited by Patrick McCurdy, takes a critical look at the media war over the tar/oil sands debate and the endless struggle for the public’s imagination. The original, paper version launched on Earth Day, April 22, 2018, and emerged from a collaboration between Patrick McCurdy, Associate Professor in Communication at the University of Ottawa, Ad Astra’s writer, Hugh Goldring, and illustrator, Nicole Burton. The project brought together McCurdy’s academic research on environmental communication with the genre of comics.
It was reviewed by the LA Review of Books in August.
“The Digital Press is excited to partner with Patrick McCurdy and Ad Astra Comix to publish this expanded version of The Beast, said Bill Caraher, Professor of History at UND and publisher at the UND Digital Press. “This book has already attracted international attention for taking on a difficult topic and expanding the debate beyond academia and specialized media. The free, expanded, open-access version of The Beast puts the project in a critical context and opens this work to new audiences, including in North Dakota, who struggle with tensions around ‘making a living on a dying planet.”
The expanded digital edition includes the original published comic as well as four new critical essays by Patrick McCurdy, Kyle Conway, Tommy Wall and Chris Russill, and Benjamin Woo along with an interview with Hugh Goldring and Patrick McCurdy.
It is available for free as a download at https://thedigitalpress.org/thebeast.
The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota serves to publish timely works in the digital humanities, broadly conceived. Whenever possible, it produces open access, digital publications that can attract local and global audiences.
