The U of I News Bureau recently interviewed Carol Tilley, GSLIS assistant professor, about her research into the personal archives of psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, an anti-comics critic whose 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent inspired federal hearings that decimated the comic book industry.
Tilley's research is based on a review of Wertham’s personal archives, which were made available to researchers in 2010. During her review, she found numerous inconsistencies between the case notes of children treated by Wertham and the content in his book:
“From a contemporary standpoint, ‘Seduction’ is horribly written because it’s not documented,” she said. “There are no citations, no bibliography. He quotes a lot of people, refers to lots of things, but there’s no really good way of knowing what his basis is for any of this.”
“Lots of people have suspected for years that Wertham fudged his so-called clinical evidence in arguing against comics, but there’s been no proof,” Tilley said. “My research is the first definitive indication that he misrepresented and altered children’s own words about comics.”
She presented her findings in the article, “Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics,” published in the November-December 2012 issue of Information and Culture: A Journal of History.
Tilley was an invited speaker for the Colloquia Series at the School of Library, Archival and Information Studies at the University of British Columbia on January 30. In her presentation, “Children, Comics, Critics, and the Researcher,” she shared her archival research on Fredric Wertham.