The Graphic Novel

LITR 2961

Spring 2024

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Comics are often treated as fringe culture, but they are far from it. If you’ve seen a blockbuster film in the past two decades, there are good chances it was adapted from a comic. We are at a point in comics history where famed novelist and essayist Zadie Smith can call a graphic novel (Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina) “the best book—in any medium—about our contemporary moment.” So how did comics’ literary and cultural fortunes rise so dramatically? 

Comics in the United States have a long history, from newspaper strips of the nineteenth century, bound comic books in the 1930s, underground comix in the 1960s and 70s, to today’s “graphic novels,” comics has1 long-been a staple of American culture and literature. With a reputation as a degraded, childish, commoditized, vulgar, and even pornographic medium, comics’ elevation has been one of the most important developments in US publishing and literary culture, a development we will examine throughout the semester. 

This course will introduce you to a key selection of comics from the past 50 years—both canonical and contemporary—and give you the chance to explore the medium through your own writing about, and through, comics. We will read a spectrum of major genres that have shaped the field of comics (including comix, graphic memoir, and superhero narratives). These texts will help you build a vocabulary for understanding and interpreting comics. 

The course also acts as a general introduction to the language of comics and will be of interest to anyone wanting to learn about visual culture and how to be a competent reader of contemporary art and culture. This course does not require any previous knowledge of comics—just a willingness to think and experiment with this exciting medium.