Academic Team:

Ben Saunders (ben@uoregon.edu) 
FIG Instructor

Eryn
FIG Assistant

Meet Your FIG Instructor and Assistant

Matrix View Schedule

Courses in the FIG:

UGST 109 FIG Seminar

Thursday | 15:00-15:50 | MCK 123 | 15238 | 1 Credit

Students in this FIG will have the opportunity to study numerous examples of verbal-visual storytelling drawn from the United States across a wide span of history.  Our discussions will consider the unique art of comics, its peculiar grammar, poetics, and appeal. We will develop and practice critical and intellectual tools for understanding and analyzing this rich and complex mode of storytelling. And we will even try our hand at creating our own visual narratives.

Students who participate in this FIG will acquire a transferrable toolkit of analytical methods and strategies leading to increased media literacy.  They will also acquire a deeper knowledge of the origins and historical development of American comics, and the specific achievements of some key creators within those traditions.  In addition, they will learn about the economic and material conditions of comic book production, and the range of comics forms (from picture scrolls to newspaper strips to the graphic novel and beyond).

ENG 280 Introduction to Comic Studies

Arts & Letters (>1) | Monday/Wednesday | 16:00-17:20 | 204 TYKE | 16059 | 4 Credit

+Dis |Friday | 14:00-14:50 | 41 LIB | 16060

This course provides an introduction to the analysis of comics and graphic narratives in terms of their poetics, genres, forms, history, and the academic discipline of Comics Studies. Our multifaceted examination will balance close readings of primary texts with in-depth research and analysis of the development of the form in U.S. culture. By reading a range of comic-art forms (the newspaper strip, the comic book, the graphic novel, etc.), informed by several examples of contemporary comics scholarship, we will investigate the medium’s complex interplay of word and image as well as the role of cultural factors in the publication history of comics.

Fulfills A&L, English Major, Lower-Division Elective, English Minor, Comics Studies Minor