Module Content

This module introduces students to the ‘graphic novel’ and examines the cultural significance of comics/sequential art and this emerging literary form, taking in a range of texts from around the world (including writers from Britain, America, France and Iran). Emphasis is placed on close reading of the texts and consideration of the different aesthetic strategies employed by these writers in order to develop a broad understanding of the genre and its potential. Recent criticism on the genre will be evaluated with a view to generating a productive critical framework for addressing both the technical aspects of the storytelling and the cultural background of the works.

Students will investigate how the graphic novel has contributed both to contemporary fiction and non-fiction, and will consider how the graphic novel can be used to present important historical events and personal experience, or evoke a place as well as explore fantasy and adventure. The selected texts are among the most influential in the genre and the module evaluates their contribution to the creative possibilities of the form.

Teaching Methods

This module is delivered through a range of lectures, seminars, workshops and review session, including some film extract showings. We will also make use of online resources and the Blackboard site for the module will include links to a range of secondary material.
The lectures will frame the wider historical and generic issues that run through the module, while seminars will build on this framing through analysis of individual books that students will have prepared, with opportunities for close reading of the texts and for group discussion and debate. In particular, seminars will focus on the interaction of text and image in the books and students will develop analytic and critical skills specific to the genre. Workshops will include hands-on examination and group discussion of graphic novels with particularly innovative formats/composition, and will also involve the consideration of examples of film and television adaptions of graphic novels.

Assessment Methods

This module is assessed through one Assignment 1 – a comparative analysis, examining two texts and one Examination: practical criticism + essay question.