Course Description This class will explore the relationship between image and text in poetry, the novel, and the graphic novel. We’ll ask both questions of formal genre – how do images inflect, augment, or complicate the text? – and questions more pressing to our contemporary moment – how has our increasingly image-obsessed culture changed our relationship to memory?
More important than what we discover about the relationship between image and text, however, will be what we discover about our relationship to image and text. At its core, this is a class about learning how to read, to write, and to think - all of which are inextricably related. Our main objective will be to slow down. We will learn how to pay attention to and reflect on images, texts, and our own writing process.
Required Texts (all available at Cal Student Store)
Rankine, Citizen
Sebald, Rings of Saturn
Bechdel, Fun Home
Sacco, Palestine
All other readings will be available on bcourses, and must be printed and brought to class in hard copy. Electronic versions of the required texts are not permitted.
In-Class Requirements
We will begin promptly at 12:10 each class. If you are more than 10 minutes late (or repeatedly late), you will be marked absent.
Laptops are not allowed in class. Cell phones should be silenced and stowed out of sight.
Food is not permitted in class (unless you have brought enough to share with everyone).
Accommodations If you require disability-relate accommodations in this class, if you have emergency medical information you wish to share with me, or if you need special arrangements in case of a building evacuation, please let me know as soon as possible.