INQ-110 | Graphic Novels

Full Title: Visual Culture and Graphic Novels

Topic Description:

This course serves as an introduction to critical methods in popular culture studies, with a focus on the graphic novel as cultural product and practice. Together, we will explore the ways in which meanings emerge in several celebrated texts of the graphic novel genre, as well as some emerging classics. The exploration of visual culture, the image as text and the graphic novel genre will lead us to interesting questions. How do we make meaning out of the image? How do images speak to us? What is Visual Culture? What is a graphic novel? Where are graphic novels situated in popular culture? What does it mean to claim that graphic novels are both marginalized genre and marginalized subject? How do graphic novels work? These questions and many others will guide our investigations of the graphic novel.

Counts as Global? No

Topic Approved: April 2010