ENGL 3080J, Sec 117 Spring 2015, Ellis 020 Writing and Rhetoric II: Comic Composition & Ideology Instructor: Rachael Ryerson Office: Ellis 307 Hours: MWF 1:00-2:30, or by appointment Email:
[email protected] Course Description This course will focus on comic/graphic novel/webcomic composition and rhetoric. To that end, we will be reading comics and critical articles about comics, writing about comics, and creating our own comics. We will read texts created by artists/writers like Art Spiegelman, Brian Vaughn and Fiona Staples, Frank Miller, Sam Keith, Andy and Lana Wachowski, Allison Bechdel, Scott McCloud, and many others, critically analyze comics in terms of ideology and formal composition, and create comics using either digital or material means. This course will also include instruction in online comic generators, comic composing software, and comic design. This course works from two premises: one, comics are socio-cultural artifacts that reflect dominant and subversive ideologies and two, they are complex sites of multimodal meaning making where image, audio (effects), text, spatial organization, and the gestural work in concert to express meaning. With this understanding in mind, we will aim toward development of our rhetorical, multimodal, and cultural literacies through the detailed reading, analysis, and creation of comics. Course Goals & Outcomes Develop cultural, critical literacy by identifying, describing, and analyzing ideological aspects of comics Develop multimodal composition literacy by analyzing and utilizing multiple modes of meaning making Research and write academic, critical arguments about comics Analyze and apply visual, rhetorical principles for an audience Analyze and evaluate the rhetorical successes/failures of comics design Approach composing/designing as a recursive process Required Materials Kieth, Sam and William Messner-Loeb.