In 2020, 82.4 million people, including 26.4 million refugees, were displaced across the planet. Why do people migrate and cross borders, and what reactions do they encounter from locals? What do graphic novels and comics contribute to the literary genre of migration and travel narratives? How do graphic narratives visually signify border crossings and intersections of race, environment, and movement? Do long-form graphic novels and serial comics represent migration differently? This course introduces undergraduate students to graphic narratives of border crossing, voluntary and forced migration and immigration, and climate and colonial land displacements, and their intersections with race, class, religion, and gender.

 In the United States and North America, our themes include indigenous land sovereignty, for which we will read Joe Sacco’s Paying the Land (Dene First Nations); internal national detention and ethnicity in Displacement by Kiku Hughes (Japanese American); climate displacement, race, and class in Josh Neufeld’s A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge (Hurricane Katrina); and U.S. border crossings, in the realist serial comic Home Vol. 1 by Julio Anta & Anna Wieszczyk (Central American migrants), and the science fiction serial comic LaGuardia by Nnedi Okorafor (African migrants). We also read narratives of international migration from the Middle East and Africa to Europe, in Alpha: Abidjan to Paris by Bessora Baroux (Côte d’Ivoire and North Africa) and Hakim’s Odyssey 1: From Syria to Turkey by Fabien Toulmé.

Course Requirements:

Course requirements include three short response papers, a final research paper, and a group oral presentation.