This class will work on enhancing German-language skills through reading, analyzing and discussing German-speaking comics. The course frames comics as part of the visual arts and will help students develop the appropriate tools and language of visual analysis to analyze the material. Accompanied by short excerpts and lectures on comics theory, the course content will provide an overview of 20th-century German history as it has been reproduced in the comics medium, investigating questions of appropriateness, medium specificity, style and visual strategies.
We will begin with a brief history on the development of German-speaking comics through Swiss teacher Rudolf Töpffer and German authors Wilhelm Busch and Heinrich Hoffmann before moving into one of the most important antecedents of the graphic novel and inspiration for both Will Eisner and Art Spiegelman, the German Expressionist wordless novel.
In addition to looking at comics from specific periods of 20th-century German history, including East and West German comics, this class investigates two of the nation’s most significant historical periods as they have been represented in comics, Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic. Finally, we shall conclude with a look at the avant-garde comics and German-speaking comics journalism that began in the 1990s.
Due to time constraints and the complexity of the material, the German-speaking comics assigned in this class will be read in excerpts, all of which will be available on CTools.
Course Requirements:
Course assignments will include four short essays, content quizzes, a weekly comics journal (due every Friday by midnight), three grammar & vocab tests and one comic book report.
Intended Audience:
Fourth semester students of German Language
Class Format:
Four fifty-minute session per week