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Teachingcomics.org
Interview with Michael Bitz of The Comic Book Project
August 17, 2005 - Conducted by phone CHRISTIAN HILL: What is the story behind The Comic Book Project? MICHAEL BITZ: I was working on a research project at Teachers College, which is the School of Education at Columbia University. The project was called Learning In and Through The Arts. We were aiming to identify all the ways that the arts impact kids socially and academically. We came up, as somebody in the arts would expect, with all these incredible ways that the arts could help kids build social and academic pathways that typically don’t occur during the school day… And […] Read More
Seika University’s Department of Comic Art
Kyoto Seika University’s Department of Comic Art is the first (and, as of this writing, only) program of it’s kind in a Japanese four-year university. It began operation in April of 2000 after two years of planning and struggle. Now in it’s fourth year, the program is preparing to send out its first class of graduates. One of our seniors has just made her professional debut, and I believe perhaps a dozen other of her forty-one classmates may be able to do the same within a year of graduating.
A Case for Comics
1. An Emerging Medium Sequential Art is pictorial storytelling. Its most widely recognized form is comics. Although comics have been traditionally associated with light diverting children’s fare, an ever growing body of work argues otherwise. Over the past two decades comics have been going through an exciting transformation. From the 1940’s through the 1960’s comics were the medium best suited to deliver action, adventure and fantasy. With the aid of new digital technologies, film, video and computer games are now much more adept at providing visceral adventures to our country’s thrill seekers.
Introduction to Comics Art: Gateway to Visual Storytelling
This class is meant to serve as a basic introduction to the elements of visual storytelling. Depending on the school and what best suits its curriculum, this class could be offered as an art studio class, an illustration course, part of a writing program or within a film and video department. If a school is only looking to offer one studio class in comics, an Intro class like this could easily serve as that class.
Studies in Literature and Culture: The Graphic Novel
Written by Brian Cremins REQUIRED TEXTS:Chynna Clugston-Major, Blue Monday: Absolute Beginners (Oni Press) Will Eisner, A Contract with God and Other Tenement Stories (DC Comics) Mike Gold (Ed.), The Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told (DC Comics) Harold Gray, Little Orphan Annie: The Sentence (Pacific Comics Club) Jason Lutes, Jar of Fools (Drawn & Quarterly) Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics (Harper-Perennial) Frank Miller and David Mazzuchelli, Batman: Year One (DC Comics) Art Spiegelman, Maus: A Survivor’s Tale (Vol. I) (Pantheon) James Sturm, The Revival (Bear Bones Press)
Reading Comics as Literature
Written by Isaac Cates In the last two decades, comics, a medium that most Americans had long dismissed as pulp fantasy and cheap entertainment, has begun to mature into an impressive and promising literary form. The 1980s saw the emergence of the “graphic novel,” the long-form comic that aspires not only to narrative coherence and closure, but to formal complexity and psychological depth. The current generation of comics artists has built on this foundation, and is now in the process of creating what may be the major literary medium of the twenty-first century. These so-called graphic novels are the texts […] Read More
Media in Cultural Context: Comics, Cartoons, and Graphic Storytelling
Comics are just words and pictures. You can do anything with words and pictures. — Harvey PekarThis is a course about words, pictures, and stories. We hope over the term to map as broad a range of different things you can do with words and pictures as possible. Our central focus will be on two important strands of graphic storytelling — comix (understood as both comic strips and comic books) and cartoons (understood as moving images). We will also be looking along the way at other forms of graphic storytelling, ranging from tapestries to children’s book illustrations. We will be […] Read More
History of Comic-Book Art
Written by Andrei Molotiu NOTE: This page contains only the introduction to this class; the syllabus itself, as well as related materials can be downloaded as a PDF document at the bottom of the page Course Level: College Course Objective: Appreciation of the artistic and formal dimensions of comics in their historical context. Andrei Molotiu has been one of the earliest professors of art history to teach a course on the history of American comics. In the materials he kindly shares with NACAE readers, you will find a syllabus with a schedule, assignment set and a reading list. In addition, he includes essay […] Read More
Explore Chicago: The Art of Chris Ware
Course Description:Understanding the cultural diversity of Chicago involves more than a study of race and ethnicity. It is concerned with the interests and activities of subcultures such as those in popular media. A study of the texts of these subcultures should reveal a fresh perspective on the issues of diversity, and a unique view of the city. This course will focus an analysis and scholarly examination of the “Chicago-based” graphic novel – Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth. Its author, Chicago resident, artist / writer Chris Ware is a creator of comic books and graphic novels whose narrative / visual […] Read More
Comics in American Culture
Course Description: An historical survey of American comic art and artists from the 1950’s to the 1990’s. The course is primarily concerned with how comics has developed and matured as a distinctively American art form, reflecting and commenting on post-W.W. II American society in a variety of narrative forms: comic strips, comic books, and graphic novels. But not simply reflecting American culture, comics themselves have often been at the center of debates about the influence of media in shaping the national character.