Course convenor
Katalin Orban
Course content
This course looks at recent popular graphic narratives that represent historical crisis in the form of comics, graphics novels, and animated films. We examine the salient characteristics of each form and analyze works reflecting on historical events ranging from the holocaust (Maus), through the Islamic revolution in Iran (Persepolis), the Bosnian war (The Fixer), the Sabra and shatila massacre (Waltz with Bashir) and the 1956 uprising in Hungary (Hungarian Revolution, 1956), to September 11 (In the Shadow of No Towers).
Indicative reading
Eisner, Will. 2002. Graphic storytelling and visual narrative: principles and practices from the legendary cartoonist. New York: Norton.
Sarapik, Vivre. 2009. Picture, text, and imagetext: Textual polylogy. Semiotica. 174: 277–308.
Ward, Paul. 2008. Animated realities: the animated film, documentary, realism. Reconstruction. 8(2).
Worth, Jennifer. 2007. Unveiling: Persepolis as Embodied Performance. Theatre Research International 32(2): 143-160.
Young, James E. 2003. The Holocaust as vicarious past: Art Spiegelman’s Maus and the afterimages of history. In Witnessing the disaster: essays on representation and the Holocaust. Eds. Michael Bernard-Donals and Richard Glejzer. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.