All students should purchase at least a few books—as many as you can afford—because it’s more fun to read on the page and it’s great to support all the comics publishers, bookstores, creators behind the works we study in this course. 

A map of local comics purveyors will be distributed via Discord, and extra credit will be offered for patronage.

*That said*—every effort will be made to make high quality facsimiles of all books for this course freely accessible online. Where this might prove impossible, digital access may be found through Comixology or Amazon or elsewhere for a modest price.

As a general outline for the course, take note that these are broad strokes subject to change. This seminar is fully interactive, growing and responding to its users. Each week will build on previous weeks, class conversations, and the directions that our study happens to follow. The content of the syllabus will be updated regularly as a result, though the requirements will remain fixed. The syllabus will only be completed after we finish the course, and all research (including your own) has been collected

This course requires synchronous play and participation during lecture sessions. I will not be “lecturing” in a way that will be usefully recorded and accessed asynchronously at some later time. I aim to produce live and meaningful interactions in the classroom. For this reason, your attendance is essential for the quarter.

Attendance is tracked via in-session doodles, which will often have collaborative and interactive components. Repeated absences will cut into your percentages. 

If you cannot attend a meeting for any reason, please make arrangements with your TA before the session.

Approved absences can be made up by posting an external resource related to the session’s reading (an interview, video, article, or otherwise) to the group Discord with a 200 word commentary. In this way, you can still participate in the collective knowledge-building functions of the course. 

This seminar will develop critical and creative tactics for writing through, with, and for comics. Through a series of reaction experiments and collaborative comics productions, a substantial body of creative scholarship on comics, graphic novels, and other sequential arts will be generated. Alongside creative/critical production, students will learn new trends in comics studies and digital platforms. Particular attention will be paid to gender, race, class, and ability in comics studies. Technical and poetic proficiency will work hand-in-hand to develop new perspectives on the creative potential inherent to today’s innovative comics practices.