ENG 380: Comics and Graphic Novels in Contemporary Culture

Dr. Robert Rozema
Online Course
 

Maus.  Watchmen.  Fun Home.  The Dark Knight Returns.   Comics like these have earned both critical and popular acclaim, addressed a range of serious subjects, and developed their own visual grammar and narrative conventions. This online course, offered in the spring of 2018, will focus on both iconic and lesser-known works of the comics medium, situating them within a comic studies approach that challenges the distinction between high and low culture.  Students will learn to recognize the formal elements of comics, examine a range of comics genres, consider the possibilities and limitations of this new narrative medium, critique the representation of race, class, and gender within comics, and write critical responses to comics in both print and visual media.  Some key questions we’ll try to answer: 

• What are comics? 
• What are the constitutive elements of comics? 
• Why and how have comics emerged as a medium over the past 100 years? 
• What works constitute the graphic canon, and how have these works gained their status? 
• As a new means of narrative, what are the limits and possibilities of the comics medium? 
• What are the possibilities and problems of representing race, class, and gender in comics? 
• What genres and subgenres exist within the comics medium? 
• What is comics studies?  How do comics studies scholars write about comics? 
• What does the popularity of comics indicate about American culture and other cultures?