ARHU158V

Restricted to first semester first year students in the College of Arts and Humanities. Art Spiegelman's ground-breaking, Pulitzer Prize-winning Maus ushered in a golden era for graphic novels. This course will examine representations and explorations of identity in graphic narrative texts. Drawing from the fields of literature, philosophy, politics, and gender and sexuality studies, questions we will address include: How do individuals form their identity? Can individuals form an identity free from the influences of family, religion, media, society? How do power structures affect constructions of identity? Also, what are the formal characteristics that make the graphic novel well suited for exploring identity?