Midterm Instructions--Due March 15!

General Directions: Write a 6-7 page paper addressing one of the following.  Below, please find a number of questions focusing on the works we’ve read during the first half of the term.  It’s important that your readings from Scott McCloud factor into your essay.  Use the terminology McCloud introduces in Understanding Comics to unpack the particularities of the text you choose to explore.  You may also want to use scanned or photocopied images to support your argument.  These images will be in addition to the 6 page minimum, rather than a part of the 6 pages. We can discuss how to “quote” from images. If you would like to use other theoretical sources on comics, I can help you find them.

Some general guidelines:

Handing in your paper late will lower your grade. As a rule, it is good to avoid using the first person in a formal paper.  Be certain to use spelling and grammar check on your computer; I am expecting that I will not have to focus unduly on this aspect of your writing when grading your work.  Back up your arguments with quotes from the reading and properly cite these quotes in MLA format.  If you have questions about citation practice, there are a number of online resources that can help you and I am happy to give you input, as well.  If you wish to work on a topic not listed below, just make sure to discuss it with me before beginning the work so we ensure it is narrow enough to fit within such a short paper.  I would be pleased to meet with you over the course of the next weeks to discuss your midterm paper if it would be helpful. Do not plagiarize! I am expecting that you won’t, but, if you do, it results in an automatic “F.”

Maus:

1. History, both global and personal, plays a large role in Maus. What is the relationship between personal history and global history in this text? How does Spiegelman balance narration of personal history and larger world historical events? How is the loss of his mother’s diary used as a thread to connect these two forms of history? How do the different genres evident in Spiegelman’s text – testimony, oral narrative, maps – work to do the same? Using specific examples, talk about how Spiegelman’s narrative choice to interweave losses both personal and large-scale works in Maus.

2. We mentioned in our discussion online that artists who wish to represent the Holocaust and the havoc it wreaked on its victims and survivors have a daunting task.  How does Spiegelman’s choice to represent the Holocaust in the form of a graphic novel allow him to address/ not address these questions of representation? Does the pictorial form of the graphic novel provide Spiegelman with a way of meditating on questions of representation? If so, how? Give specific examples and explain how they link to the larger issues surrounding representation of trauma.

3. Framing devices are very important to how we read and understand Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Most significant of the framing devices in the text is Art’s relationship with Vladek, which structures how we, as readers, interpret the novel, comprised as it is of testimony he collects from his aging Holocaust survivor father.  Keeping the importance of framing devices in Spiegelman’s work in mind, what do you make of the epigraphs that begin each volume of Maus? How do they work to introduce and structure our reading of the text? How do they create or disrupt continuity between the volumes? Use Spiegelman’s epigraphs to explore Maus and the role of framing in the text.

4. Art Spiegelman’s choice to portray the conflict between Nazi and Jew in World War II era Europe as a battle between cat and mouse drew much attention when Maus was published.  How does Spiegelman’s use of animals to represent national or ethnic types work in Maus?  Use close readings of a few scenes in the text to explain how Spiegelman’s animal characters allow him to comment on the historical circumstances of the war and the place of racial-thinking in it.

Persepolis:

1.      1. Both Maus and Persepolis are memoirs written in graphic narrative form.  However, Spiegelman and Satrapi’s narratives differ in key ways.  How does Satrapi’s choice to frame the story of the Islamic Revolution in Iran through the eyes of a child affect your reading of her story?  How does this choice contrast with Spiegelman’s more cynical, by-proxy narrative of the Holocaust?  How do Spiegelman and Satrapi use imagery differently/ similarly?

2.      2. Satrapi’s Persepolis proves unique in the comics genre because it is centered on the viewpoint of a female child and, later, young woman.  How does gender factor into your experience of Persepolis?  Does Satrapi suggest something about the ways in which revolutions affect women in particular? How does Satrapi’s focus on female experience challenge our idea about the conventions of comics?

3.      3. Persepolis is very much a narrative about place and the role it plays in the formation of identity.  The characters in Satrapi’s memoir struggle to stay in a chaotic homeland or deal with the complexities of exile.  How does Satrapi use the physical space of the comic to comment on the power of geography during a period of social tumult?

     Shortcomings 

1     1. Unlike Persepolis and Maus, Shortcomings is an entirely fictional narrative. At the same time that it is a fictional text, Tomine's drawing and narrative styles are much more realistic and photojournalistic than the previous authors we've read.  Using McCloud's discussion of the spectrum of realistic representation in Understanding Comics, discuss how Tomine's realistic visual and narrative choices affect your experience as a reader. 

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2    2. One of the central mechanisms by which Tomine explores race in Shortcomings is in his representation of romantic relationships that challenge and, sometimes, uphold racial stereotypes. Analyze the various romantic relationships in the text and the way they link to larger contemporary currents in racial theory. 

     American Born Chinese

    1. As we discussed on the blog, the history of caricature and comics are intertwined.  How does Yang use caricature and offensive stereotype in American Born Chinese?  What visual and narrative choices does he make that demonstrate to us as readers that he is trying to undermine stereotype? 

2   2.  Yang combines folklore with more realistic, contemporary narrative, as well as sitcom-style storytelling in his book. He also combines Eastern and Western religion in American Born Chinese. What sort of story about culture do these cross-pollinations tell?  How do they complicate or extend the immigrant stories we normally hear? 

Stuck Rubber Baby:

      1. In Stuck Rubber Baby, Howard Cruse compares the civil rights movement with burgeoning movements around GLBT rights. What point does he make in this comparison? How does the graphic medium allow him to draw out this comparison? How does his work illustrate the theme of intersectionality as articulated by Crenshaw?

      2. Stuck Rubber Baby is one of the earliest works we’re reading in class. How does it mark the early days of the graphic narrative/ graphic novel movement? How does it compare to other books we’ve read stylistically and thematically? Pick one other text and make a detailed comparison.