Graphic Novels: Bridging Cultures

About

This course looks at encounters between different cultures, positive and negative, as represented in graphic novels. We may encounter different cultures as tourists, as students, as journalists, as immigrants or as exiles. Sometimes when we enter a different culture, we are cut off from our surroundings by linguistic difference, and forced to observe as an outsider. Even when we speak the language of the other culture, or some of those we encounter speak our language, there remains a distance that needs to be bridged. How does the visual narrative form of the graphic novel, where both words and the real world are represented only as symbols, help communicate the challenge of communicating and understanding? Several examples from the German- and English-speaking worlds will be examined; depending on time and availability, texts may include Line Hoven’s Love Looks Away, Guy Delisle’s Pyongyang, Sarah Glidden’s Rolling Blackouts and Ulli Lust’s Today Is The Last Day Of The Rest Of Your Life (all texts in English).

Course leader

Prof. Paul Malone

Target group

Undergraduate Students

Fee info