Anya Pauline Davidson

This team-taught class is an intensive, three-week immersion in comics. The faculty consists of two SAIC faculty members and one visiting-artist-in-residence, working in a studio alongside students. Students work with faculty one-on-one, participate in group critiques, and attend lectures prepared by the faculty members.

For over a century, illustrators have used the comics medium to document current events and disseminate information, but due to globalization, the ascent of the graphic novel and the birth of the internet, the practice is now more vital than ever. From global conflicts to cultural events, cartoonists are documenting the defining moments of our era as they happen, and are creating works that help readers comprehend the complex historical, political and cultural forces shaping our world. In this class, students will read classic works of graphic journalism, learn best practices for artists in the field, and create their own short works that explore various aspects of contemporary life in Chicago and beyond.

This course explores nonfiction narratives told in the first person. Students will read and discuss examples of memoir, personal essay, journalism, and diary comics, as well as more experimental formats. Truth, point of view, and ethics will be examined, particularly in how they work along with storytelling, tone, style, and other formal aspects of comics. The work created by the students will vary broadly based on their interests and personalities, with the general goal of self-examination. Readings and guest artists will vary each semester. Selected readings include graphic novels and mini-comics that have been published recently by both large publishers and self-published by individual cartoonists. Skype visits allow students to ask questions of comics artists, critics, publishers, and distributors. Past guests have included artists Julia Wertz, Carta Monir, Summer Pierre, and John Porcellino, Lauren Weinstein, critic Rob Clough, and publisher Raighne of 2dcloud. Some additional artists that I often introduce are Gabrielle Bell, Vanessa Davis, Lisa Hanawalt, Sarah Gliddens, Karl Stevens, Kevin Budnik, Roz Chast, Cara Bean, and Liana Finck. Students will reproduce 16 copies of a 24 or more page comic, which will be distributed to the class during the final critique. They will complete one or more pages each week, which will be critiqued and discussed throughout the whole semester. Students will read several books and online comics, which will be discussed in class.

Horror, Science Fiction and Fantasy comics began as popular entertainment, intended to sell units on newsstands with lurid cover art and shocking story titles, but artists have always used the genres to investigate such complex topics as identity, illness and the body, and to lay bare the structural forces behind racism, sexism and political oppression. Students will read some classic works as well as a handful of contemporary pieces that use genre as a jumping-off point. Throughout the class, they will make a number of short comics that investigate contemporary life through the lens of the fantastic, to be collected and presented in the form of a printed zine.