GRAPHIC NOVEL AUTOBIOGRAPHIES AND BIOGRA

This course explores the generative intersection of text and image in graphic novel autobiographies and biographies, offering students an introduction to literary analysis through one of today's most innovative storytelling forms. Autobiographical and biographical graphic narratives are perhaps the best known and most widely read graphic literary texts, combining words and hand-drawn images to create powerful accounts of personal experience, historical events, trauma, memory, and identity formation. Course readings consist of classic works in the genre—Maus (Spiegelman), Fun Home (Bechdel), and Persepolis (Satrapi)—alongside more recent texts—They Called Us Enemy (Takei), Baddawi (Abdelrazaq), and The Best We Could Do (Bui). This diverse reading list will expose students to varied artistic styles, narrative approaches, and cultural perspectives, providing a foundation for understanding how graphic storytelling operates across different contexts. The inherent subjectivity of hand-drawn images, as well as the limitations of memory and post-memory, raise important questions about the authority and authenticity of these narratives. By closely analyzing these texts, students will consider how creators have used the medium's unique affordances and what strategies they employ to address its limitations when depicting lived, historical experiences. Class discussions will be supplemented by relevant academic scholarship and contextual materials that creators drew upon in producing their work. Course assignments will consist of short writing assignments, analysis essays, and a creative zine project in which students craft their own personal graphic narratives. The analytical assignments are designed to help students develop multiple competencies: critical analysis skills, visual literacy, and creative expression, while the zine project offers students a hands-on opportunity to experiment with the graphic narrative form, deepening their understanding of how meaning emerges from the interplay of text and image. No prior experience studying graphic novels is required. Graphic Novel Autobiographies and Biographies fulfills Barnard's Arts/Humanities Foundation requirement.