Publications

This article seeks to investigate how Ram Devineni and his team’s productions–Priya’s Shakti (2014), Priya’s Mirror (2016), and Priya and the Lost Girls (2019)–break the coveted layers of frames and panels of comics and go beyond them to sensitise the readers on the nuances of gender-based violence in India with the incorporation of augmented reality. Within the fields of comics studies and gender studies, the article also explores how augmented reality in graphic narratives encourages and facilitates its readers in being sensitised to the gender roles and gender-based issues pertinent in South Asian societies. Before the series’ origin as an outcome of the protest against the 2012 Delhi-Rape Case, Devineni locates the diverse nuances of gender-based violence (rape, acid attack, sex trafficking) and addresses them in their comics using Hindu Mythology as a tool.