A Comics Reboot: If The Dark Knight Can Do It, So Can I
After several years watching from the sidelines of comic book scholarship, I will be stepping back into the game, just a little bit, next term (Winter, 2019).
While completing my doctoral degree, I presented several conference papers that engaged with contemporary and historical comic topics, and I taught a course in comic media from a Communication Studies perspective at Portland State University in 2010. After a multi-year hiatus driven by the demands of a non-comic dissertation, a tenure-track academic position, and tenure itself, I have been called back into the domain of comic theory and practice by the Honors College at my current institution, Southern Oregon University.
The course is HON315 — Art, Culture & Humanities, and our topic for the term will be Comics, Culture & Politics. So far, 13 of our Honors College students have enrolled to make this journey with me.
The landscape of comics scholarship has evolved dramatically since I last took a close look at the literature, nearly ten years ago. Serious courses in comics have proliferated, at San Francisco State, and USC, and Harvard, and the University of Texas at Dallas, and many more. Even at smaller colleges such as SOU, curricula in comics production and criticism have taken root. The University of Mississippi launched an academic press devoted to comics scholarship, and other scholarly presses have published important titles in the same genre. Academic programs have emerged, such as those at the University of Oregon and Portland State.
Perhaps of greatest importance, the popularity of blockbuster films such as Wonder Woman and Black Panther have provoked exciting critical discourse about feminism, ethnicity and representation.
However, as I re-immerse in the exciting new world of robust comics scholarship, one challenge remains. Now as then, academic comics studies typically align more closely with the humanities, and less commonly with social scientific perspectives.
Among my goals for HON315, I hope to bring to students a holistic take on comics scholarship, embracing interpretive methods consistent with disciplines such as art history, literary studies and Cultural Studies, and also integrated the legacy and diversity of approaches within the domain of Communication Studies. These include media effects, audience reception and political economy.
How might a century of media scholarship help to inform what’s happening right now in comic books and affiliated media?
In most of my teaching, I motivate students to produce work for public audiences via blogging, social media and other platforms available in the modern media landscape, and HON315 will continue that commitment. Stay tuned for more updates from our classroom, and the perspectives that these students will bring forward soon.
