More Fun Home(work)

By telling her story of self-discovery and -creation through reading, Alison Bechdel encourages us, her readers, to think critically about our own reading practices. Chief among the practices she highlights are (1) how we read of maps; (2) how we read collages; (3) how we read allusions (i.e., to other texts); and (4) how we read documentary evidence (e.g., photos, handwritten notes, official documents, etc.). For Bechdel, these reading practices -- each in its own particular way -- is a way for the reader to discover and to create his or her self.

By the start of class on Tuesday, please finish reading Fun Home; pick out ONE place where we, the readers, are asked to practice one of these reading strategies (or some combination of them); and then write two paragraphs in which you analyze the following:

1. How that map, collage, allusion, or document contributes to our understanding of Alison or her father's self-discovery or self-creation. 
2. What questions it raises about the discovery/creation of the selves more broadly -- for example, our own selves.

As always, please post your response to Google Drive.

Fun Home(work)

Yep, "Fun Home(work)" just may be the worst pun ever. But I couldn't resist. . . .

There are two things to do this weekend:

1. Please read chapters 1-4 of certified genius Alison Bechdel's, Fun Home, then write a discussion question for class. (Please write your question on paper: I'm going to collect them at the start of class.)

Your question can be about any topic from Fun Home that interests you. But please write a question that will help us to investigate the deeper significance of Bechdel's text. In other words, avoid purely factual questions (like “What's a 'girandole'?”) and purely evaluative questions (“Who's a better artist -- Bechdel or Tomine?"). Instead, try to craft a question that will help us dig really deeply into the text's themes and its artistry: that is, what it means, and how it creates that meaning.

2. Read the first project assignment carefully and write a 300-500-word pitch for your idea. The first paragraph should briefly sketch the plot of your story. The second should describe the larger theme your story will explore (or, as Alan Moore would put it, your story's "idea"). The third paragraph should describe the artistic strategies you'll employ: i.e., how will you use the visual and verbal resources of the comics page to tell your story and explore your theme in the deepest, most compelling way possible. (Please post your pitch to Google Drive.)

(By the way, if drawing really isn't your thing, there are a bunch of comics-making sites online that you may want to explore. I've linked to a bunch of them on our "making comics" tab.)

Finally, I thought some of you would be interested in this fascinating and all-too-brief interview with Bechdel, in which she talks about her creative process:

Shortcomings homework

By the start of next class, finish reading Shortcomings and post a paragraph to Google Drive in which you interpret the significance of one of its silences, gaps, or omissions.

The Last Saturday and Greek Myth Comix

I thought that you might like to check out these wonderfully imaginative examples of graphic writing as you're composing the first pages of the stories of your lives: The Last Saturday, by Chris Ware, and Greek Myth Comix, by Laura Jenkinson. Ware is one of the most astonishingly inventive visual artists working today; Jenkinson is a literature teacher whose stick figure renderings of classical lit are truly ingenious.

Alison Bechdel wins "genius grant"!

Alison Bechdel, creator of Fun Home, which we're going to read in a couple of weeks, just won a MacArthur Fellowship -- popularly known as the "genius grant."



More at Jezebel. . . .

What is the idea of Blankets + The (first three pages of the) story of my life

The (first three pages of the) story of my life

Imagine that your favorite comics company has asked you to create a graphic novel — the only catch is that you’ve got to sell them on your idea for it. Write a 500-word pitch for a graphic novel that captures the story so far — and the meaning so far — of your life. And then sketch out the first three pages of that graphic novel (i.e., the first “solo” page, and then pages 2 and 3 as a two-page spread).

Use Moore’s advice about generating ideas to help you start.

And remember: You don’t need to be an accomplished (or even a halfway decent) artist to do a terrific job with this assignment. If you draw your pages in stick figures, that’ll be fine. Just use what you learned about the visual possibilities of comics Scott McCloud to make those stick figures convey the genius of your idea.

Homework for Thursday

Please complete the "The (first three pages of the) story of my life" assignment that you started in class:

Imagine that your favorite comics company has asked you to create a graphic novel — the only catch is that you’ve got to sell them on your idea for it. Write a 500-word pitch for a graphic novel that captures the story so far — and the meaning so far — of your life. And then sketch out the first three pages of that graphic novel (i.e., the first “solo” page, and then pages 2 and 3 as a two-page spread). 

Use Moore’s advice about generating ideas to help you start. 

And remember: You don’t need to be an accomplished (or even a halfway decent) artist to do a terrific job with this assignment. If you draw your pages in stick figures, that’ll be fine. Just use what you learned about the visual possibilities of comics Scott McCloud to make those stick figures convey the genius of your idea.

Please bring your competed pages (or a Xerox thereof) to class, to hand in to me.

Also, read chapter 1 of Adrian Tomine's Shortcomings, and share a paragraph via Google Drive wherein you state (1) what you believe the central conflict of the story to be; (b) what themes (or, in Moore's terms, "ideas") you see emerging; and (c) what you believe to be the most visually interesting panel, page, or two-page spread.