Jewish Graphic Novels
NEJS 176b
Spring, 2017
Tuesday and Thursday 3:30-4:50
Lown 202
Professor E.Kellman
Office hours: Monday and Wednesday 2-3 and by appointment
From 1930s newspaper strips to contemporary, Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic literature, comics have a history of attracting Jewish talent and innovation.Artists like Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman helped create the genre widely known today as the “graphic novel,” which emerged from a low-brow, commercial tradition in popular culture. Appealing to literary, artistic, commercial, and popular sensibilities, comics push formal and generic boundaries.Blurringboundaries between“high” and “low” art, and functioning both as works of literature andvisual art, they offer multidimensionalJewishperspectives on gender, history and culture.By allowing text and image to interact and diverge, graphic novels lend themselves to the expression ofthe multilayered nature of Jewish history and identity, offering nuanced iterations of Jews' experiences of theology, community, family, selfhood, gender and sexuality across time and space.
Focusing on a hybrid literary form with its own compelling Jewish history, this course offers exposure to an array of questions posed in the field of modern Jewish literature and culture, as well as an opportunity to develop critical reading and writing skills applicable both to literary analysis and to the study of popular and material culture. The course begins with a unit devoted to formal reading methods and critical approaches to the genre, followed by a survey of the history of Jewish artists’ involvement in the production of comics and graphic narratives. Organized thematically, the reading list draws from a variety of sub-genres in which Jewish comics artists are working: the graphic novel, the short story, historical non-fiction, memoir, biography, documentary, and the comics strip. The works included offer interpretations ofchanging gender roles,immigration, American and European acculturation,nationalism, religion and mysticism, Israeli responses to trauma, and the Holocaust and its aftermath.
Using relevant gender theory, the course will explore how graphic novels are suited to creatively handle the historical reconfiguration of Jewish gender identities and the individual experience of gender for the Jewish self across challenging and shifting contexts.
Structured around primary works, class meetings will be discussion-based, beginning with brief lectures to contextualize each work and provide relevant history.In addition to the primary works, students will be assigned secondary readings drawn from contemporary scholarship in the field.
Introduction to the course
Tuesday, January 17
Course overview (visual examples on LATTE)
Derek Parker Royal: “Jewish Comics; Or, Visualizing Current Jewish Narrative” Shofar 29:2 (2011): pp. 1-12. (LATTE)
ReadingGraphic Narratives Weeks 1 and 2 (3 sessions)
Thursday, January 19
Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics, chapter1 (1993).
Katherine Roeder: “Looking High and Low at Comic Art” American Art 22:1 (2008): pp. 2-9. (LATTE)
Hillary Chute: “Comics as Literature? Reading Graphic Narrative” PMLA (2008): pp. 452-465. (LATTE)
Tuesday, January 24
Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics, chapters 2 and 3.
Visual examples from the course syllabus and Tintin, Barefoot Gen, A Jew in Communist Prague, Persepolis, and Fun Home
Erin McGlothlin: “Reading a Graphic Novel" and "Comics Terminology” (LATTE)
Thursday, January 26
Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics, chapters 4, 5 and 6.
Visual examples from the course syllabus and Tintin, Barefoot Gen, A Jew in Communist Prague, Persepolis, and Fun Home
Historical Overview: From Male Adventures toMarginal Voices
The Golden Age of Comics and American Universalism
Tuesday, January 31
John Cawelti: "Literary Formulas" (LATTE)
Danny Fingeroth: Disguised as Clark Kent. 2007. Introduction and Chapter 3 pp. 17- 22 and pp.39-50(LATTE)
Jules Feiffer:"The Minsk Theory of Krypton" (LATTE)
Michael Chabon: excerpt from The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay(LATTE)
Jennifer K. Stuller: “Second-wave Feminism in the Pages of Lois Lane,” in Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods, Matthew J. Smith and Randy Duncan, eds. (2012) pp. 235-251. (LATTE)
Trina Robbins: "Cartoonist Lily Renée" in Pretty in Ink - North American Women Cartoonists 1896-2013pp. 86-89. (LATTE)
Examples from: Superman comics, published by National Allied Publications and DC Comics (1938- )(LATTE)
The“Captain America” origin story and comic book covers, published by Marvel Comics (1941-42) (LATTE)
Examples from Women at War: The Golden Age Comics of LilyRenée,Trina Robbins, ed.:"Jane Martin" pp. 56-61 and "Senorita Rio" pp. 67-76(download the pdf of Women at Warviathe link on LATTE)
Thursday, February 2
Film: "Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist" (1st part)
Examples from Will Eisner’s “The Spirit” (1940- ) in The Best of the Spirit and Will Eisner's The Spirit archives, anthologies published by DC Comics (LATTE)
Celebrating Difference
Tuesday, February 7
Arie Kaplan: “Outsider Heroes” (Part Two, Chapter 15) in From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books (2008) pp. 111-115. (Online Access, Brandeis Library)
Cheryl Alexander Malcolm, “Witness, Trauma, and Remembrance: Holocaust Representation and X-Men Comics, in The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, Samantha Baskind and Ranan Omer-Sherman, eds., 2008: pp. 144-162. (LATTE)
“X-Men” issue # 14 Marvel Comics (1963- ) (LATTE)
Thursday, February 9
MADMagazine andUnderground Comics
Arie Kaplan: “Notes from the Underground” (Part Two, Chapter 18) in FromKrakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books (2008), pp. 137-150, and “New Trends andInnocent Seducers” in From Krakow to Krypton, pp. 72-74 (Online Access, Brandeis Library)
Excerpts from Mad Magazine (1952- ) and its influence on the underground (LATTE)
R. Crumb on Harvey Kurtzman(LATTE)
Art Spiegelman on Harvey Kurtzman(LATTE)
Excerpts from R. Crumb’s “Mr. Natural” comics (LATTE)
Tuesday, February 14
Alternative Comics and the Early Work of Art Spiegelman
Hillary Chute: “Women, Comics, and the Risk of Representation” in Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics (2010)(LATTE)
Examples from AlineKominsky-Crumb's Need More Love (LATTE)
Erin McGlothlin: “Art Spiegelman and AutobioGRAPHICal Re-Vision” in Graphic Subjects, Michael A. Chaney, ed., 2011. pp. 45-50. (Online Access, Brandeis Library).
Bella Brodzki: “Looking for Art in Young Spiegelman” in Graphic Subjects, Michael A. Chaney, ed., 2011. pp. 51-58. (Online Access, Brandeis Library).
Excerpts from Art Spiegelman: Breakdowns: portrait of the artist as a young %@... (1977) (LATTE)
Art Spiegelman’s earlyversion of Mausin R. Crumb: Funny Aminals(1972)(LATTE)
Thursday, February 16
Will Eisner Develops the Graphic Novel
Film: "Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist" (2nd part)
Practice for a Close Reading Exercise with a partner
Laurence Roth: “Drawing Contracts: Will Eisner’s Legacy” in Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels,” A. David Lewis and Christine Hoff Kraemer, eds. (2010), pp. 44-61. (LATTE)
Arie Kaplan: “From Novel Graphics to Graphic Novels” (Part 2, Chapter 19) in From Krakow to Krypton: Jews and Comic Books (2008) (Online Access, Brandeis Library)
February 21 and 23 no classes
Immigration/Acculturation/Otherness: Jewish Gender Crosses Space and Time
Tuesday, February 28
Will Eisner: A Life Force (1988) Chapters 1-6
Jeremy Dauber, “Comic Books, Tragic Stories: Will Eisner’s American Jewish History,” in The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, Samantha Baskind and Ranan Omer-Sherman, eds.,2008: pp. 22-32 (LATTE)
Close Reading Exercise Due
Thursday, March 2
Will Eisner: A Life Force Chapters 7-11 (concluding discussion)
Annie Polland and Daniel Soyer: Emerging Metropolis (excerpt) (LATTE)
Trina Robbins: "The Triangle Fire" (1980) (LATTE)
Two Yiddish political cartoons about prostitution(LATTE)
The Underworld (Di untervelt) Yiddish graphic serial (1911) (LATTE)
Ruth Rosen: The Lost Sisterhood: Prostitution in America 1900-1918 (1982): pp. 1-14 (LATTE)
Tuesday, March 7
LeelaCorman: Unterzakhn (2012) pages 9-118
Timothy J. Gilfoyle: “White Slaves and Kept Women” in City of Eros: New York City, Prostitution and the Commercialization of Sex 1790-1920 (1992), pp. 270-297. LATTE)
Thursday, March 9
LeelaCorman: Unterzakhn (2012) pages 119-204 (concluding discussion)
Rob Clough: "Unterzakhn" review in The Comics Journal(LATTE)
Jules Feiffer's Career -from Comic Strip Artist to Graphic Novelist
Clifford: "Reading Comics" from The Spirit, October 29, 1950 (LATTE)
Excerpts from Tantrum (1979) (LATTE)
Excerpts from Cousin Joseph (2016) (LATTE)
Holocaust and Intergenerational Memory: The Post-Traumatic Family
Tuesday, March 14
Art Spiegelman: Maus - A Survivor's Tale Book I (1986) Chapters 1-4
Linda Hutcheon: “Postmodern Provocation: History and ‘Graphic’ Literature”
La Torre (Revista de la Universidad de Puerto Rico) 2:4-5 (1997): pp. 299-308 (LATTE)
Thursday, March 16
Art Spiegelman: Maus IChapters 5-6 (concluding discussion)
Marianne Hirsch: “Mourning and Postmemory” in Graphic Subjects, Michael A. Chaney, ed., 2011. pp. 17-44. (LATTE)
Tuesday, March 21
Art Spiegelman: Maus- A Survivor's Tale Book II(1991) Chapters 1-2
Thursday, March 23
Art Spiegelman: Maus - A Survivor's Tale Book II Chapters 3-4 (concluding discussion)
Hillary Chute: “‘The Shadow of a Past Time’: History and Graphic Representation in Maus” Twentieth Century Literature 52:2 (2006): pp. 199-230 (LATTE)
Tuesday, March 28
Miriam Katin: We Are On Our Own (2006) Pages 3-69
Samantha Baskind: “A Conversation with Miriam Katin,” in The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, Samantha Baskind and Ranan Omer-Sherman, eds. 2008: pp. 237-243. (LATTE)
Thursday, March 30
Miriam Katin: We Are On Our Own (2006) Pages 70-122 and unpaginated epilogue (concluding discussion)
Michel Kichka: Second Generation (excerpts)(LATTE)
Anat Rosenberg: “Holocaust Graphic Novels Give Israelis a Way to Connect to a Past Not Quite Theirs” Tablet Magazine (July 2013). (LATTE)
Tuesday, April 4
RutuModan: The Property (2013)
Erica T. Lehrer: "The Quest: Scratching at the Heart" in Jewish Poland Revisited - Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places (2013) pp. 91-122 (LATTE)
Thursday, April 6
RutuModan: The Property (concluding discussion)
Interview with RutuModan about The Property (LATTE)
April 11, 13 and 18 no classes
Divided Selves: Jewish Men and Women on Coherent Identity
Thursday, April 20
Joann Sfar: The Rabbi’s CatI (2005) Chapters 1 and 2 pp. 1-94
"Jews in Algeria" from Encyclopedia Judaica(LATTE)
Paul Eisenstein: “Imperfect Masters: Rabbinic Authority in Joann Sfar’sThe Rabbi’s Cat” in The Jewish Graphic Novel: Critical Approaches, Samantha Baskind and Ranan Omer-Sherman, eds.,(2008) pp. 163-180(LATTE)
Tuesday, April 25
Joann Sfar: The Rabbi’s CatI (2005) Chapter 3 pp. 95-142 (concluding discussion)
Darby Orcutt: “Comics and Religion: Theoretical Connections” in Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Graphic Novels,” A. David Lewis and Christine Hoff Kraemer, eds. (2010), pp. 93-106(LATTE)
Michael Weingrad:"Drawing Conclusions: Joann Sfar and the Jews of France" in Jewish Review of Books, Spring 2015 (LATTE)
Thursday, April 27
RutuModan: Exit Wounds(2008) Chapters 1 and 2 pp. 9-98
Marjorie C. Allison: "(Not) Lost in the Margins: Gender and Identity in Graphic T exts" in Mosaic vol. 47, no. 4 December, 2014 (LATTE)
Tuesday, May 2
RutuModan: Exit Wounds Chapters 3 and 4 pp. 103-183
Concluding discussion
Course Requirements and Grading Criteria
Success in this 4 credit hour course is based on the expectation that students will spend a minimum of 9 hours of study time per week in preparation for class (readings, class discussions, close readings and written assignments).
Requirements for undergraduate students
1. Active participation in class. The course is taught as a seminar. You are expected to do all reading assignments in advance and to participate in online and class discussions. In addition to reading books and articles, you will frequently be assigned to view excerpts from comic books and graphic novels. You will access these images via LATTE. Regular attendance in class is a must.
2. Written work. Undergraduates will be assigned to write three 6-8 page papers with a choice of topics. Students will complete a close reading exercise prior to writing the first paper.
Grading
Class participation: 25%
Close reading exercise: 15% (assigned February 16, due February 28)
Paper #1: 20% (assigned March 9, due March 21)
Paper #2: 20% (assigned April 4, due April 20)
Paper #3: 20% (assigned April 25, due May 4)
Requirements for graduate students
In lieu of writing three short papers, graduate students will be assigned one 20-25 page research paper on a topic to be developed in consultation with the professor. Graduate students may elect to do additional secondary readings and to meet with the instructor periodically to discuss them.
Students with disabilities:
If you are a student with a documented disability on record at Brandeis and wish to have a reasonable accommodation made for you in this class, please see me immediately.
Course books are available for purchase at the Brandeis Bookstore, and are also available at the reserve desk in Goldfarb Library.
Scott McCloud: Understanding Comics (1993)
LeelaCorman: Unterzakhn (2012)
Will Eisner: A Life Force (1988)
Miriam Katin: We Are On Our Own (2006)
RutuModan: Exit Wounds (2008)
RutuModan: The Property (2013)
Joann Sfar: The Rabbi’s CatI (2005)
Art Spiegelman: Maus I (1986)
Art Spiegelman: Maus II (1991)