Course Description

This is not really a course about comics but a writing course where we will explore the medium of comics as a method of working towards the goals listed above and achieving the course learning outcomes. Comics is a fantastic medium for us to make use of in this writing course because it is inherently hybrid and multimodal and because comics always calls into questions exactly how we ought to read it. For a reader navigating the space of the page, reading comics can feel less directive and linear than reading most prose narrative, so we will frequently ask ourselves questions about the relationships between words and images, wonder about how our eyes are directed across the page, and analyze the complex communications strategies that it employs. In comics the combination of words and images, and how this narrative exists laid out in space on the page, requires an active and involved literacy, with a high engagement of reading and looking for meaning. 

We will read and discuss a number of powerful contemporary comics – including graphic memoir and other nonfiction comics, fiction, and other genres in the comics medium. You will write with both words and images as a method of further developing your critical thinking and communication skills. You will write to explore concepts like genre, rhetoric, academic discourse, and critical thinking, while further developing and honing your own methods and styles of writing. There are weekly “low-stakes” sketch assignments to encourage your exploration of different methods and techniques, along with some larger analytical writing assignments. These course assignments include a variety of formal and informal genres, all of them incorporating multiple modes of communication (Written, Oral & aural, Visual, Electronic, and Nonverbal). You will write and design a narrative comic of your own as well as create visual analyses over the course of the semester. No particular preexisting drawing talent or expertise is required for successful completion of this course.