Modern Comics Exploration
Read your way through the recent history of comics
The comics that we read have a way of insinuating themselves into the work that we make. Whether it's your childhood love of Peanuts or your teenage obsession with Batman, the themes, characters and page dynamics return to us.
In Modern Comics Exploration, develop a critical eye and practice the language of comics through weekly readings, online discussions and responses to questions about the unique art and literary form that is comics!
6 Weekly Zoom calls on Mondays, 8 pm Eastern:
Weekly critical and creative readings
Weekly Zoom call, archived for reference
Online discussion forum
Direct feedback and engagement from Instructor
Course details
Introduction to Modern Comics Exploration
What is a Graphic Novel by Jessica Abel
How to Read Nancy
Scott McCloud - Stories for Humans
Writing about Comics and Graphic Novels
(Optional) How to Make Comics and Cartoons by Liana Finck
Week 1: Autobiographical Comics: How True is Truth?
One! Hundred! Demons! by Lynda Barry
Coyote the Beautiful by Coyote Shook
Keyword of the Week - MEMOIR
Week 2: Strip Tease: Newspapers and Beyond!
Keyword of the Week - COMIC STRIP
Week 3: Combatting Marginality
Chan Chau: Parts of Us
Nivedita Sekar: Your Heart is an Apple
The Saddest Angriest Black Girl in Town
Keyword of the Week - RACE
Week 4: Drawing Space and Time
On a Sunbeam PDF
Keyword of the Week - GRAPHIC NOVEL
Week 5: Webcomics
Keyword of the Week - WEBCOMICS
Instructor Bio:
Ayanni C. H. Cooper (née Hanna; she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department at the University of Florida, where she focuses on Comic Studies & Animation. A graduate of CUNY Brooklyn College's English M.A. program, her research interests include monster theory; feminist critique; gender & sexuality; science fiction & fantasy; representations of Blackness in speculative fiction; and anime & manga studies. Her dissertation project analyzes representations of desire for the monstrous body in recent comics, animation, and other illustrated media. Ayanni's M.A. thesis focused on the French comic series Sky Doll, paying particular attention a series of in-text arguments surrounding womanness and humanness.
Ayanni also co-hosts the podcast Sex. Love. Literature., which takes a semi-scholarly look at why the “sex-stuff” in media matters. When not dissertating, she enjoys playing Destiny with her family (#TitanMain), finding new cartoons to watch/comics to read, and making friends with the neighborhood cats. She lives with her husband Andrew and their chonky cats, Chloe and Grey Ghost, in San Antonio, TX.