Four-Color Creatures: Race, Gender, and Monstrosity in American Comic Books and Popular Culture

This course explores the relationship between race, gender, and monstrosity in American popular culture, particularly in comic books and graphic novels. Utilizing the concept of the monster as a metaphor, we examine the intersection of these discourses to interrogate how monstrosity informs our collective understanding of the other and affects the representation of race and gender in contemporary print ephemera and visual culture. To compliment our understanding of these materials, we engage with scholarship in the emerging fields of Monster Studies and Comic Studies to highlight the way that these artifacts embody larger trends within American society.