TRANSCULTURAL COMICS

Credit Hours: 3 · Undergraduate Lower-Level

This course offers a diverse survey of comics and graphic novels from the early days of comics to present graphic novels. We will examine the role transculturalism played in the history of comics, and still plays in present developments in the medium. Our exploration of the genesis of comics will focus on the centrality of Jewish-American figures in this “golden age.” Our investigation of current developments will look back at the influence of the civil rights-, women rights-, and LGBTQ rights movements on the development of 1970s underground comix, and the traces of underground comix in the diversity of 21st century graphic novels. We will address themes as immigration and assimilation, race and ethnicity, sexuality and gender, trauma and memory. An overarching theme will be the inherent hybridity of the medium, and how it serves narratives related to small or disenfranchised communities and offers their authors a unique form of expression.