LiU Summer Academy: Costumed heroes, angry ducks and single moms - reading and learning in the world of comics

Aim

After completion of the course, students will be able to:

• account for the historical development of the comics medium in relation to a cultural and social context.
• analyse comics intertextually with literary or cultural analytical tools.
• describe and discuss various multimodal functions of the comics medium.
• account for a few didactic methods connected to comics.

Content

The course studies comics from an aesthetic, as well as political and cultural, perspective, and the role of comics in society both historically and in present day. Within this framework the course sheds light on different forms of comics – strips, graphic novels, comics – and various genres (fiction, non-fiction, autobiographical, adventure etc.). The student is introduced to the historical and physical development of comics and encounters different type of stories from English-American, Belgo-French, Japanese, and Swedish comics tradition. The course also has a didactic focus that offers an in-depth exploration of the potential of comics as educational tools.