An Introduction to English 333
by Prof. Charles Hatfield
Welcome, students, to the world of comics studies!
Bear in mind that the name comics is just a tag—and a misleading one at that. Across the globe the art form has many other names, for example bande dessinée (literally "drawn strip"), manga, manhwa, fumetti, quadrinhos, and historietas. It has fancier names in English too—broad academic names that have been introduced recently, such as graphic narrative and sequential art. For the sake of convenience I call it simply comics, because that term has a specificity that other terms lack and because I believe comics is more likely to be understood in our culture. Comics includes many genres, among them the now-celebrated graphic novel—which is an international genre, even though the term graphic novel is American in origin. Other comics genres include the panel cartoon, comic strip, comic magazine or journal (e.g. the American "comic book" or the British comic weekly), album, webcomic, minicomic, and more.
The study of this art form, in all its genres, is on the rise. English 333 is part of an upsurge in comics studies that has produced a growing number of comics courses at colleges and universities in the US and internationally. I developed 333 about ten years ago. The official catalog description of the course (see here) is meant to be as wide-open as possible for an English course about comics, so that I and other instructors can have the freedom to design and redesign the course as we think fit.
Comics is big.
The thing to remember is that no single course can "cover" comics. That's impossible. The comics field is too diverse to sum up in one semester or even several years' worth of study. We could build an entire minor or major around comics (hopefully someday we will) and still we'd be forced to exclude many aspects. Out of necessity, then, courses like 333 have to focus down on particular aspects, i.e. specific issues, genres, styles, cultures, scenes, or traditions within comics. In other words, 333 may have a different focus each time out: for example, at times it may concentrate on classic comic strips, but at other times contemporary graphic novels; one semester it may focus on superhero comics, but in another semester it may include no superheroes at all. The precise focus and requirements for 333 are always open to revision, within the broad parameters laid out in the catalog copy above. (It's worth noting that my colleague Nicole Eschen teaches the course much differently than I do—which I believe is a sign of a healthy course!)
I change 333 every time I teach it. It's an ongoing experiment. However, I do hold myself to a few ground rules. For one thing, I like to focus on the ART of comics. That is, I tend to emphasize the formal and aesthetic qualities of comics, meaning how comics works and how it can be used: what the form can do, or what artists and readers can do with it. Generally, my classes talk about the art and design of comics, and we do a great deal of up-close, nut ‘n’ bolts analysis of how comics suggest meaning (or rather how we make meaning out of comics as we read them). As part of this process, my students usually practice working in the form themselves—that is, they create comics. In fact, making comics has been the one constant in all my comics teaching; I believe in giving students an opportunity to experience firsthand the challenges of working in the medium. Hands-on learning is good!
Out of necessity, my 333 tends to focus on book-length comics in English, i.e. the graphic novel—or, in the case of nonfiction genres, the graphic memoir, graphic history, and so on. I call these graphic books in general. Of course other genres came before the graphic book, such as the comic strip or the US-style comic book (what collectors have nicknamed the floppy); often we talk about those in class too. One of the big challenges in designing the course is trying to figure out how to get so much into a single semester.
Bear in mind that the name comics is just a tag—and a misleading one at that. Across the globe the art form has many other names, for example bande dessinée (literally "drawn strip"), manga, manhwa, fumetti, quadrinhos, and historietas. It has fancier names in English too—broad academic names that have been introduced recently, such as graphic narrative and sequential art. For the sake of convenience I call it simply comics, because that term has a specificity that other terms lack and because I believe comics is more likely to be understood in our culture. Comics includes many genres, among them the now-celebrated graphic novel—which is an international genre, even though the term graphic novel is American in origin. Other comics genres include the panel cartoon, comic strip, comic magazine or journal (e.g. the American "comic book" or the British comic weekly), album, webcomic, minicomic, and more.
The study of this art form, in all its genres, is on the rise. English 333 is part of an upsurge in comics studies that has produced a growing number of comics courses at colleges and universities in the US and internationally. I developed 333 about ten years ago. The official catalog description of the course (see here) is meant to be as wide-open as possible for an English course about comics, so that I and other instructors can have the freedom to design and redesign the course as we think fit.
Comics is big.
The thing to remember is that no single course can "cover" comics. That's impossible. The comics field is too diverse to sum up in one semester or even several years' worth of study. We could build an entire minor or major around comics (hopefully someday we will) and still we'd be forced to exclude many aspects. Out of necessity, then, courses like 333 have to focus down on particular aspects, i.e. specific issues, genres, styles, cultures, scenes, or traditions within comics. In other words, 333 may have a different focus each time out: for example, at times it may concentrate on classic comic strips, but at other times contemporary graphic novels; one semester it may focus on superhero comics, but in another semester it may include no superheroes at all. The precise focus and requirements for 333 are always open to revision, within the broad parameters laid out in the catalog copy above. (It's worth noting that my colleague Nicole Eschen teaches the course much differently than I do—which I believe is a sign of a healthy course!)
I change 333 every time I teach it. It's an ongoing experiment. However, I do hold myself to a few ground rules. For one thing, I like to focus on the ART of comics. That is, I tend to emphasize the formal and aesthetic qualities of comics, meaning how comics works and how it can be used: what the form can do, or what artists and readers can do with it. Generally, my classes talk about the art and design of comics, and we do a great deal of up-close, nut ‘n’ bolts analysis of how comics suggest meaning (or rather how we make meaning out of comics as we read them). As part of this process, my students usually practice working in the form themselves—that is, they create comics. In fact, making comics has been the one constant in all my comics teaching; I believe in giving students an opportunity to experience firsthand the challenges of working in the medium. Hands-on learning is good!
Out of necessity, my 333 tends to focus on book-length comics in English, i.e. the graphic novel—or, in the case of nonfiction genres, the graphic memoir, graphic history, and so on. I call these graphic books in general. Of course other genres came before the graphic book, such as the comic strip or the US-style comic book (what collectors have nicknamed the floppy); often we talk about those in class too. One of the big challenges in designing the course is trying to figure out how to get so much into a single semester.
Comics studies is just getting started.
333 aims to break ground in a relatively young academic field. Until recently, critics of literature and art have tended to damn or dump on comics, or just sidestep them, dismissing them as an embarrassing species of pulp fiction or at best a naïvely revealing mirror in the funhouse of Pop Culture. Over the past thirty or so years, though, comics have been earning new kinds of critical attention; more and more, they’re being recognized as a complex, dynamic form and a deep, rich tradition (actually an international constellation of various traditions, plural). Even now we’re in the process of putting together a critical toolbox for analyzing and evaluating works in this form. Comics studies is still doing new things—speaking personally, that's part of why I dig it.
Studying comics may mean getting out of our accustomed habits and trying on new ways of reading. After all, comics by their nature frustrate attempts to put them into a pigeonhole (are they pictorial narrative? visual poetry? graphic design? all of the above?). How do I read them? What do I look at first? Comics are tough to pin down. Yet working to build a toolbox for comics study can help us interact with our visual culture—the whole crazy, swirling kaleidoscope of it—more intelligently, more sensitively. Analyzing comics can help us tune up our minds so that we can approach all sorts of imagetexts—whether Web pages or experimental poetry or billboards by the side of the road—from a smarter perspective. Most importantly, studying comics means reading some of the most provocative work contemporary storytellers and artists have to offer. Simply put, there’s some wonderful work in this field.
The specific objectives and requirements of 333 change each time out, and of course I spell them out in the syllabus I give at the start of each semester (check out the pages for Course Work and Books for a glimpse into what the class will be doing this time, in Summer 2015). In brief, the things I tend to stress in the course are:
333 aims to break ground in a relatively young academic field. Until recently, critics of literature and art have tended to damn or dump on comics, or just sidestep them, dismissing them as an embarrassing species of pulp fiction or at best a naïvely revealing mirror in the funhouse of Pop Culture. Over the past thirty or so years, though, comics have been earning new kinds of critical attention; more and more, they’re being recognized as a complex, dynamic form and a deep, rich tradition (actually an international constellation of various traditions, plural). Even now we’re in the process of putting together a critical toolbox for analyzing and evaluating works in this form. Comics studies is still doing new things—speaking personally, that's part of why I dig it.
Studying comics may mean getting out of our accustomed habits and trying on new ways of reading. After all, comics by their nature frustrate attempts to put them into a pigeonhole (are they pictorial narrative? visual poetry? graphic design? all of the above?). How do I read them? What do I look at first? Comics are tough to pin down. Yet working to build a toolbox for comics study can help us interact with our visual culture—the whole crazy, swirling kaleidoscope of it—more intelligently, more sensitively. Analyzing comics can help us tune up our minds so that we can approach all sorts of imagetexts—whether Web pages or experimental poetry or billboards by the side of the road—from a smarter perspective. Most importantly, studying comics means reading some of the most provocative work contemporary storytellers and artists have to offer. Simply put, there’s some wonderful work in this field.
The specific objectives and requirements of 333 change each time out, and of course I spell them out in the syllabus I give at the start of each semester (check out the pages for Course Work and Books for a glimpse into what the class will be doing this time, in Summer 2015). In brief, the things I tend to stress in the course are:
- exploring (and practicing using) the distinctive formal qualities of comics, and becoming conversant with the common critical terms used to describe these qualities;
- reading some of the best that contemporary comics have to offer, with emphasis on graphic books by diverse creators.
In class we pursue these goals via discussion, lecture, and varied class activities; much reading and writing; and, usually, a great deal of work online, typically via Moodle. Because 333 demands a lot of analytical writing, completion of CSUN’s lower-division writing requirement is prerequisite to being in the class.
So, students, welcome aboard! I hope you find English 333 stimulating, challenging, eye-opening, and enjoyable. And readers—whether you're students or not—feel free to peek into our process, via this site's blog.
So, students, welcome aboard! I hope you find English 333 stimulating, challenging, eye-opening, and enjoyable. And readers—whether you're students or not—feel free to peek into our process, via this site's blog.