English 5970

Introduction to Comics Studies

Course Policies and Syllabus – Spring 2014

Instructor Information

Professor: Dr. Gwen Athene Tarbox,
Department of English / Course Blog:
PREFERRED FORM OF CONTACT:
/ Office Hours: Thursday, 10:45-11:45 am and by appointment
Tel: 269-387-2588 / Office: 911 Sprau Tower
Meeting Times: T 4:00-6:20 pm / Classroom: 4045 Brown Hall

Catalog Description

A study in historical perspective of selected literary works of the English speaking world or international literature in translation.

Learning Objectives

Explore the historical background of the comics medium

Develop an understanding of the “grammar” involved in reading a panel, a page, and an entire comics sequence

Learn terminology associated with visual and literary theory

Practice interpretative skills with a number of critically significant long form comics

Learn to write about comics, with sensitivity to form, content, and literary merit

Apply course content to your educational and professional objectives

Text List

The total cost for the books and copy card for this class comes to approximately $150 (based on purchasing entirely new texts on Amazon.com). Students are welcome to purchase their texts from Follett’s, from an online retailer, or from a local bookstore. Many of the texts are available on e-readers, and if you choose to purchase texts in this way, you will need to be sure to bring your e-reader to class.

On the first afternoon of class, we will meet in our classroom from 4-5:30 and then can choose to join me over atBookbug, an independent bookstore located in the Oakwood Plaza, about 1 mile from campus. The owners will introduce you to their collection of YA and adult comics and, if you’d like to buy your books with them, they have pledged to give students a discount on course materials. You can contact them at

Text List/Additional Expenses

Author / Title / ISBN / Publisher / Appx Cost
Bá and Moon / Daytripper / 9781401229696 / Vertigo (DC Imprint) / 15.41
Barry / One Hundred Demons! / 9781570614590 / Sasquatch Books / 14.91
Bechdel / Fun Home / 9780618871711 / Houghton Mifflin / 11.40
McCloud / Understanding Comics / 9780060976255 / Harper Collins / 17.49
Moore and Gibbons / Watchmen / 9780930289232 / DC / 15.65
Sacco / Journalism / 9780805097931 / Henry Holt / 15.33
Spiegelman / Maus: A Survivor’s Tale: My Father Bleeds History (Vol 1) / 9780394747231 / Pantheon / 12.88
Tan / The Arrival / 9780439895293 / Scholastic / 15.32
Yang / Boxers and Saints, Boxed Set / 978-1596439245 / First Second / 24.62
COPY FEE CARD – REQUIRED AND AVAILABLE IN WMU BOOKSTORE / 5.00
APPROXIMATE TOTAL / 148.01 New

Attendance Policy

Please try to be present at every class meeting. I pack each session with important information, and believe me, there is no substitute for being there. I will take attendance at the beginning of class. If you miss more than THREE (3) classes, then you will fail my course. The rationale for this policy is that after being absent for 3 classes, you have missed too much information to be able to say honestly that you have “taken” the course.

If you miss numerous classes, it is usually because you have encountered a serious family or personal emergency. I recommend that if you are facing an emergency, you should quickly contact the Associate Dean of Students, Dr. Suzie Nagel, who can help in a number of ways, including setting up appointments with a counselor, contacting your professors, and/or providing you with advice regarding whether you should carry on with your classes. You can contact the Dean of Students office at 387-2150.

As I used to live in the Grand Rapids area, I am particularly aware of the dangers of travelling during snow storms. If you live outside of Kalamazoo, you should not travel during dangerous weather. Hopefully, we will not have any snow days. Use your absences wisely so that if you should need to miss class due to a snow emergency (when the university administration doesn’t cancel class), you can do that.

If you are sniffling, coughing uncontrollably, and/or are running a fever, you should not be in class, both because you need rest and because you are undoubtedly contagious. If you have been told by your doctor that you have a contagious condition, such as pink eye or influenza, you should not come to class. Your fever should have been gone for 24 hours before you come to campus! Use your absences wisely so that if you should need to miss class due to illness, it will not hurt your final grade. If you come to class looking visibly ill, I will send you home – so please save the trip.

Reading Policy

We will be reading a number of comics this semester, and most of them are relatively short. It is my expectation that you will have read the ENTIRE text prior class period in which we will be covering it.

I will be asking you to read a number of articles online, using the university’s Project Muse database. For each article, you should print out a copy and bring it with you to class.

English 5970 is a 3 credit-hour class. As such, students should expect to spend at least 9 hours outside of class per week on homework. If you are a slow reader, you may need to devote more time than 9 hours. The university calculates that time by multiplying each contact hour by three.

Cellphone and Laptop Policy

Please remember to turn your cellphone off prior to the start of class. On regular class days, when we are not having an exam or watching a movie, I will stop what we are doing at 5:10 and we’ll take a 10 minute break, during which you can use your cellphones and laptops, go to the bathroom, or grab a snack. At the end of 10 minutes, you’ll need to power down, and we’ll get back to work. This way, you won’t have to go the entire class period without access to the wired world…but for the rest of the time, phones/laptops should be powered down.

Laptops can be used during in class exercises; otherwise, laptops should be stowed. You should take notes during lectures with paper and pen/pencil.

Assignments/Grading Policy

The total possible points to earn in this course is1000. You can keep a tally of your points as we go along. For students’ final grades, I will use the WMU Grading Scale: A = 930-1000; BA = 880-929; B = 830-879; CB = 780-829; C = 720-779; DC = 670-719; D = 600-669; E = 599 or lower.

Your assignments will be due on the dates set in the syllabus. For every day that an assignment is late, you will receive a 10% deduction on the assignment grade. I start counting as “one day,” the minute after an assignment is due. Thus, if your assignment is due on March 12th at 4pm, I would give you a 10% deduction on the assignment at 4:01pm. Then, the next day at 4:01pm, you would receive another 10% deduction, and so on. To put this into real numbers, if the assignment were worth 100 points, you would lose 10 points for each day late.

The assignments you turn in will enable you to practice a variety of academic writing skills. Should you require assistance with your writing, you might wish to visit the WMU Writing Center, which is located in Ellsworth Hall. Call 387-4615 to find out their operating hours and sign-up procedures.

Here are the assignments in table form:

Due Date / Assignment / Points
Tuesday, Feb 27 at 9 pm / Midterm / 300
Tuesday, April 22, 5-7 pm / Final Exam / 300
Tuesday, March 11 at 4 pm / Paper Proposal / 100
Tuesday, April 15 / 5-7 page comic explication/analysis Paper / 200
Tuesday, April 15 / Paper Presentation / 50
Assigned Day during the semester / Discussion Leaders / 50
TOTAL / 1000

Academic Honesty Policy

You are responsible for making yourself aware of and understanding the policies and procedures in the Undergraduate Catalog that pertain to Academic Honesty. These policies include cheating, fabrication, falsification and forgery, multiple submission, plagiarism, complicity and computer misuse. [The policies can be found at under Academic Policies, Student Rights and Responsibilities.] If there is reason to believe you have been involved in academic dishonesty, you will be referred to the Office of Student Conduct. You will be given the opportunity to review the charge(s). If you believe you are not responsible, you will have the opportunity for a hearing. You should consult with me if you are uncertain about an issue of academic honesty prior to the submission of an assignment or test.

Syllabus

Date / Primary Text / Secondary Readings / Key Questions
Jan 7 / WMU canceled classes for Tuesday, January 7. Please do the assigned reading: Chapters 1-6 in McCloud and Tan’s The Arrival. Also, if you wish to support a local bookseller, head over to Bookbug in the Oakwood Plaza; the owners are willing to give students a discount on books ordered there. Books are also available at the WMU bookstore and via retailers online. Be sure to have your reading done and your McCloud and Tan books with you on the 14th.
Jan 14 / The Arrival, Tan / Chapters 1-6, McCloud, Understanding Comics /
  1. What vocabulary terms are associated with the study of comics?
  2. How do we read a comic panel and how do we make interpretative associations between panels?
  3. How does an author/illustrator convey meaning without the use of text?
  4. What statement does Tan make about the immigrant experience?

Jan 21 / Fun Home, Bechdel / Chute, “An Interview with Alison Bechdel” in Modern Fiction Studies 52.4 (2006): 1004-1013. [Project Muse]
Video Interview, Chute and Bechdel: (Critical Inquiry website – Google it, or use the link on the blog).
[This video is 40 minutes long] /
  1. How does Bechdel view issues of authenticity in her own work?
  2. In what ways does Bechdel’stext conform or resist traditional ideas about the coming of age narrative?
  3. Is it necessary that Bechdel’s story be viewed as “true” (even if she says that is?)? In other words, can we identify the fictional properties inherent in the act of reconceptualizing the past? And can we read against Bechdel’s narrative?

Jan 28 / Fun Home,
Bechdel / Due to inclement weather, I held a shorter version of class; we discussed Fun Home
Feb 4 / Daytripper, Moon and Bá / Baetens, “From Black & White to Color and Back: What Does It Mean (not) to Use Color?”
College Literature
38.3 (2011): 111-128. [Project Muse]
Chapters 7-9 in McCloud, Understanding Comics /
  1. In the peritextual material appended to Daytripper, Moon and Bá note that color was central to their plans for the novel. How does color create meaning in the novel?
  2. What sort of work does the reader need to do in order to understand the structure of the text? What value might there have been in constructing a chronological account of the protagonist’s life?
  3. How is the figure of the artist depicted in the text?

Feb 11 / One Hundred Demons! Barry / Hillary Chute, Chapter from Graphic Women on Barry [Handout]
De Jesus, “Of Monsters and Mothers:
Filipina American Identity and Maternal Legacies in Lynda J. Barry’s One Hundred Demons” in Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 5.1 [Project Muse] /
  1. How might underground comics be considered “an outsider’s” text? Does Barry seem to position herself as an outsider? If so, in what ways?
  2. How does the layout of One Hundred Demons deviate from what one might have come to expect from most comics? Why might be Barry’s motivation for following a different aesthetic?

Feb 18 / Boxers and Saints, Yang / Petra Mayer interview with Yang on NPR: “'Boxers & Saints' & Compassion: Questions For Gene Luen Yang.”
Yang, Wesley. “Views of the Rebellion
Gene Luen Yang’s ‘Boxers’ and ‘Saints’.” The New York Times [Handout] /
  1. Given the polarizing events that are chronicled in Yang’s texts, how might he manage to avoid what critic Wesley Yang (no relation) terms “the mythmaking that can result from combining history and fable in comic book form”?
  2. Yang uses the “clear line” style perhaps best exemplified in Hergé’sTintin series. What are the properties of the style and how might it impact the way that violence is depicted in the series?
I will distribute the mid-term at the end of class and it will be due by 9pm on Feb 27 to meelectronically.
Feb 25 / Journalism, Sacco / Walker, "Graphic Wounds: The Comics Journalism of Joe Sacco." Journeys 11.1 (2010): 69+.
Woo, “Reconsidering Comics Journalism: Information and Experience in Joe Sacco’s Palestine.” [Handout] /
  1. What are some of the issues surrounding non-fiction comics?

Feb 27 / Mid-term exams will be due electronically by 9pm.
Mar 4 / SPRING BREAK
Mar 11 / Paper Proposals Due in E-learning Dropbox by 4:00 pm. Class will not meet; students will attend a Paper Proposal conference, where they will receive feedback on the proposal and on their Mid-term exam.
Mar 18 / Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons / Excerpt from Seduction of the Innocent [Handout]
Geoff Klock, “The Bat and the Watchmen: Introducing the Revisionary Superhero Narrative” in How to Read Superhero Comics and Why [Handout] /
  1. What conceits and tropes of the superhero genre do Moore and Gibbons interrogate in their text?
  2. Intertextuality is a major component of Watchmen, as philosophical, artistic, and other cultural elements emerge as important topics of discussion among the characters and as the impetus for their behavior. What intertextual elements can you identify?
  3. What cultural conditions in the 1980s spurred the publication of texts such as Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight?

Mar 25 / Watchmen, Moore and Gibbons / Tony Venezia, “Archive of the Future: Watchmen as Historiographic Novel” [Available as a PDF online; enter Venezia’s name and Watchmen as search terms.]
Thierry Groensteen, Chapter 2, The System of Comics [Handout] /
  1. How do Groensteen’s ideas about the grammar of comics apply to a text such Watchmen?

Apl 1 / Maus I, Spiegelman / Joseph Witek, “Imagetext, or, Why Art Spiegelman Doesn’t Draw Comics” in ImageText, 1.1 (2004).
Hillary Chute, “History and Graphic Representation in Maus” [Handout]
Excerpts from MetaMaus [Handout] /
  1. What was the reception history of Maus and how did its prestige impact subsequent North American comics production?
  2. What is anthropomorphism and how does it influence the act of looking at the past and at human suffering?

Apl 8 / I will bring three copies of Ware’s Building Stories to class. Students will work in groups to analyze the text and to share their insights.
Apl 15 / Paper Presentations; Papers are due by 11:59 pm in the e-learning Dropbox.
Apl 22 / Final Examination, 5:00-7:00 pm. Open book exam