Comics and Globalization

Catalog description

As the contemporary boom in sequential graphic texts shows 'the comics' can be both a media bonanza and a deeply personal and engaging creative medium. Comics are often cheap to produce, accessible to large audiences, and relatively easy to distribute around the world. In fact, the scholar Hillary Chute has argued that comics represent the most effective form of cultural expression today. In this course, students will consider comics as means to analyze the social, political, and economic conditions of globalization, and thus examine various systems of financial exchange, political power, cultural expression and ideological belief. Towards this end, we will focus on three primary regions of comics production: Japanese Manga, European 'Bande Desinee' and the comic book through the Americas -- including the comic form in South America.