Develop your understanding of comics with a survey of contemporary graphic narratives

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! 

Weekly live Zoom meetings

6 Weekly Zoom calls on Mondays, 8 pm Eastern:

  1. Nov 1 - Week 1: Autobiographical Comics: How True is Truth?

  2. Nov 8 - Week 2: Strip Tease: Newspapers and Beyond!

  3. Nov 15 - Week 3: Combatting Marginality

  4. Nov 22 - Week 4: Drawing Space and Time

  5. Nov 29- Week 5: Webcomics

  6. Dec 6 - Week 6: Manga Aesthetics

What's included

  • Weekly critical and creative readings

  • Weekly Zoom call, archived for reference

  • Online discussion forum

  • Direct feedback and engagement from Instructor

Course curriculum

    1. Course details

    2. Introduction to Modern Comics Exploration

    3. What is a Graphic Novel by Jessica Abel

    4. How to Read Nancy

    5. How to Make Comics and Cartoons by Liana Finck

    6. Scott McCloud - Stories for Humans

    7. Writing about Comics and Graphic Novels

    8. Keyword of the Week - PANEL

    1. Week 2: Autobiographical Comics: How True is Truth?

    2. One! Hundred! Demons! by Lynda Barry

    3. Coyote the Beautiful by Coyote Shook

    4. Keyword of the Week - MEMOIR

    1. Week 3: Manga Aesthetics

    2. Keyword of the Week - MANGA

    1. Week 4: Webcomics

    2. Keyword of the Week - WEBCOMICS

    1. Week 5: Combatting Marginality

    2. Chan Chau: Parts of Us

    3. Nivedita Sekar: Your Heart is an Apple

    4. The Saddest Angriest Black Girl in Town

    5. Keyword of the Week - RACE

    1. Week 6: Drawing Space and Time

    2. On a Sunbeam PDF

    3. Keyword of the Week - GRAPHIC NOVEL

    4. Final Assignment - Session 2 - An Image in a Ruin

About this course

  • $149.00
  • 25 lessons
  • 0 hours of video content

Ayanni Cooper

Instructor Bio:

Ayanni C. H. Cooper is a graduate of the English doctoral program at the University of Florida, where she specialized in comics and visual rhetoric. Her research interests include monster theory; gender & sexuality; science fiction & fantasy; multimodal texts, like podcasts; and erotica studies. She explored many of these themes in her dissertation project, “We Live in a Time of [Sexy] Monsters”: Exploring Erotic Monstrosity in Contemporary Visual Media. (To put it simply, she’s curious why so many folks are attracted to monsters. It’s a very important research question!) 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 games with her family, finding new cartoons to watch/comics to read, and making friends with the neighborhood cats. You can find more information about Ayanni, including her publications, at ayanni.com.

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.

Ayanni Cooper

Instructor