Hillary Chute’s academic career was transformed by “Maus,” the serialized graphic novel that won the 1992 Pulitzer Prize for its story of a Polish Jew who survived the Holocaust.
“I read ‘Maus’ in a graduate seminar when I was getting my Ph.D. in English,” says Chute, a Northeastern distinguished professor of English and art + design whose work has focused on comics and graphic novels. She has written and edited several books exploring the form, including two centered on “Maus,” and she started writing columns for The New York Times Book Review in 2018.
Chute’s vocation has helped her appreciate the power of comics and graphic novels to connect with kids, helping them make sense of their own circumstances and the larger world around them.