THE GRAPHIC NOVEL: A CRITICAL INVESTIGATION AND CELEBRATION
Utilizing an international selection of contemporary graphic
novels, this course examines the ways this genre deploys conventional literary
expressions such as allegory, epic, character, setting and extended metaphor. We will consider how comics resist, represent, and entrench dominant cultural ideologies of power, myth, heroism, humor, gender and political ideologies. We will look at genres expressed within the graphic novel such as memoir, biography, historical narrative and
folklore. With a combination of literary artistic and folkloric methodologies for analysis, the course will provide students with the critical tools to read and analyze this form of creative expression from a number of perspectives.
Key Texts: Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art by Scott McCloud, Narrative Structure in Comics: Making Sense of Fragments by Barbara Postema, Full Metal Alchemist by Hiromu Arakawa, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic by Alison
Bechdel, Coraline by Neil Gaiman, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank
Miller, V for Vendettaby Alan Moore
and David Lloyd, The Complete Persepolis
by Marjane Satrapi, Maus I: A Survivor’s
Tale by Art Spiegelman, Fables: Snow
White by Bill Willingham. Texts will be available at
Revolution Books, 2625 South King Street.
944-3106.
Additional materials will be available on the class Laulima
site at the beginning of the semester.
Assignments: Four reading responses, two shorter essays, one research essay, midterm, final with oral exam, two presentations.