Admission requirements
The course American Comics Against the Code: Autobiography and Journalism in Graphic Novels is intended for students from a limited number of programs. Because of the limited capacity available for each program, all students who will enroll are placed on a waiting list. Students in the MA program in North American Studies (NAS) will have priority. The definite admission will be made according to the position on the waiting list and the number of places that will be available after the North American Studies students have been placed. In total there is room for 24 students in the seminar; the estimated number of NAS students who will follow the course is about 15.
The definite admission will be made according to the position on the waiting list and the number of students from each program.
Description
Spiegelman has described comics as “a gutter medium; that is, it’s what takes place in the gutters between the panels that activates the medium.” On the face of it, Spiegelman refers to how to read comics, but implicitly, he also attends to a common American perception of comics as ‘low’ culture.
Comics and graphic novels have only recently come to be recognized as a serious art form, requiring specific reading skills and literary sensibility. Although hybrid forms of word-and-image storytelling have been around since the Bayeux tapestry, comics became a mainstream commercial product in the 20th century. Our starting point is the American tradition, but we will also study transnational graphic novels and comics as a globalized form.
In the United States, comics were made acceptable and non-controversial through the ‘Comics Code’ (1954), which forbade comics to portray nudity (and sexuality, idealizations of crime etc.). This led to a strong and creative movement of underground comics artists. This underground tradition of graphic narrative saw a pivotal moment in the genre’s road to mainstream recognition with the publication of Art Spiegelman’s Maus (1980).
This course approaches comics and some of its subgenres – graphic memoir, graphic journalism – from various vantage points: as a means of narrating trauma and memory, as a form of resistance to dominant culture, and as a mode of transcultural communication. We will investigate how graphic novels can be read, what modes of storytelling and what kinds of stories they promote, and how they negotiate memory, identity, culture and politics.
We will also attend briefly to forms adjacent to graphic novels, such as political cartoons, animation, manga, and commercial comics.
Course objectives
This course aims to:
develop students’ analytical and critical skills through in-depth reading of graphic novels and other image-text-hybrids in their historical and cultural contexts;
introduce students to theoretical concepts in memory, identity, journalism;
develop critical understanding of the field of comics, and the place of the US tradition, and specifically American graphic novels within that;
develop students’ skills to conduct independent research;
develop students’ oral and written communication skills;
develop their ability to apply theoretical and critical insights in a research essay.
Timetable
Visit MyTimetable.
Mode of instruction
- Seminar
Assessment method
Assessment
oral group presentation (20%)
Active discussion participation (20%);
research essay (c. 4000-4500 words; 60%)
Research MA students will have to write an extra 3000 word paper on a topic to be decided in consultation with the tutor.
Weighing
The final grade for the course is established by determining the weighted average. Presence and participation in class is required.
Resit
If the final grade is insufficient, only the research essay can be rewritten.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
Will Eisner, A Contract with God (1978)
Art Spiegelman, Maus I & II (1980-1991)
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (1993)
Joe Sacco, Palestine (1993)
Phoebe Gloeckner, The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2002)
Alison Bechdel, Fun Home (2006)
Gene Luen Yang, American Born Chinese (2006)
Marjane Satrapi, Persepolis (2007)
David Small, Stitches (2009)
Guy Delisle, Jerusalem (2011)
Roz Chast, Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant? (2014)
Octavia Butler, Kindred, the Graphic Novel Adaptation (2016)
Registration
Enrolment through uSis is mandatory.
General information about uSis is available on the website.
Registration Studeren à la carte en Contractonderwijs
Not applicable.
Contact
Remarks
None