2007-08 AM Welcome to the Desert of the Real: History, Trauma, and Popular Culture

This course starts out to explain what comics are and to provide a historical overview, from The Yellow Kid to In the Shadow of No Towers. The course aims to deepen our understanding of the origins and development of comics or the graphic novel and popular culture in the United States.

Art Spiegelman's two volumes Maus: My Father Bleeds History and Maus II: Here My Troubles Began as well as his recent book In the Shadow of No Towers are put into the center of attention in our class discussions. We will explore comics as forms and interpretations to ask how catastrophic events are/ can be remembered.

In conversation with recent readings at the juncture of trauma, memory, visuality, and performance (e.g. Dominick LaCapra, Hayden White, Cathy Caruth, Shoshana Felman, Dori Laub, James Edward Young, Aleida Assmann) this course will address cases drawn from the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, and 9/11.

Prerequisites for certificate: regular attendance, active participation, mid-term essay, in-class oral presentation (approx. 15 minutes), final paper (10-12 pages, approx. 5000 words)

Starting on: 23.10.2007

Please purchase Art Spiegelman's The Complete Maus (Penguin Books, 2003) and In the Shadow of No Towers (Pantheon Books, 2004).