Spring 2015 Course List
AAD 252 Art & Gender*** Voelker-Morris, Julie
This course explores issues associated with art, gender, and society by considering how gender is relevant to the creation, study, and appreciation of art and culture; introducing and addressing socio-cultural factors influencing roles of women and men in the arts, culture, and society; discussing gender as a vehicle for understanding artistic creation and select artistic mediums–including the visual arts, comics, theatre, film, music, architecture, and media/advertising–in community and cultural contexts; examining underlying social structures that affect how art and artists have been defined; and, asking students to identify and articulate personal critical perspectives regarding issues of art and gender.
Two sections one section is ***On-line course
JPN 250 Manga Millenium Walley, Glynne
*COLLEGE SCHOLARS STUDENTS ONLY
MANGA MILLENNIUM looks at the thousand-year history of visual-verbal narratives – comics – in Japan. The modern Japanese form of comics, manga has become an inescapable part of global popular culture, but few fans are aware of the rich tradition of comics and comics-like narratives that existed in Japan before the development of manga.
This course will survey the history of this medium from its beginnings in the classical period to the present day. In particular we will concentrate on three forms of visual-verbal literature: the narrative picture scrolls of the classical and medieval period (ca. 11th-16th centuries), the “yellowback” comic books of the early modern period (18th-19th centuries), and the manga of the 20th-21st centuries.
No familiarity with Japan is required; this class will double as an introduction to Japanese culture. In addition to the history of comics in Japan, we will consider the relationship of comics to Japanese literature, art, theater, and film. We will also inquire into the relationship of text to image, the development of popular culture, and the nature of the comics medium itself.
COLT 370 Comparative Comics: “Comics and Trauma” Tougas, Ramona
This course considers the way graphic narratives often mediate traumatic events though seemingly simple images. Symbolic representations of trauma and transformation can shape the way history is told-whether it is the history of an individual, a family, or a nation. This course challenges assumptions about the simplicity or childishness of comics and considers graphic narratives as a nuanced medium for representations of war, imperialism, and depression. Comics and graphic narratives are often most successful when they balance humor with a rhetoric of heroism-even while representing personal or political conflict. The course compares cartoons and graphic narratives across a wide range of historical, national and linguistic contexts. From the 11th-century Bayeux Tapestry to the 2013 blog and book Hyperbole and a Half-the course analyzes ways in which texts construct an internal grammar of images to make sense of violence, alienation, and conquest. The course compares the ethical stakes of looking at graphic ways photography, drawings, and textiles with the ethics of political cartoons, graphic memoirs, and serialized comic books. We will examine the ways these images make meaning and the complications of translating words and images.
ENG 313 Teen and Children’s Literature: A UO Literacy Initiative Course
Wheeler, Elizabeth
Co-req: ENG 404 Internship Community Literacy
Explores books for young readers and their social implications, from picture books to comics and young adult novels, classics to recent bestsellers. We also go out in the community and do volunteer work with actual kids. Sites range from public schools to community gardens and homeless shelters. The required internship is 3-12 hours per week (1-4 credits), teaching and mentoring kids from babies to age 18 (your choice of site and age group).
This course is brought to you by the UO Literacy Initiative, a service learning program of the UO English Department. 1789+; Counts for Comics Studies and Disability Studies focus of SPED minor.
SPAN 407* Sem Latin American Comics Chavez Landeros, Daniel
Mitos y Monitos, Reading the Nation in Latin American Comics
The art of serial narrative in historietas or comics was appropriated early in Latin America. Throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, graphic artists, governments, and other institutions have created a wealth of characters and series to portray history, spread the word of economic and cultural change, to instill social values, or to criticize authoritarian tendencies in politics. After introducing the elements for visual analysis and a brief history of the medium, this class analyzes prime examples of the representation of national history, adaptation of literature, and cultural criticism thorough comics from Mexico, Argentina, Cuba, and Nicaragua.
*Taught in Spanish