Z604/Z672 Comic Books and Their Readers

Digital and Empirical Methods for Studying Readership and Fandom
Spring 2024

12:40 - 15:15 Wednesday, Sycamore Hall (SY) 103

Instructor: Associate Professor John A. Walsh, jawalsh@indiana.edu.
Office Hours: Schedule at https://fantastical.app/jawalsh-r1Wz/office-hours.

Associate Instructor: Alex Wingate, alewinga@iu.edu
Office Hours: Thursdays, 1:30pm-2:45pm, and by appointment (click Zoom link in Alex’s profile)

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Charles “Teenie” Harris. Girl reading “Mickey Mouse and the Submarine Pirates” comic book with small dog lying across her lap, inGeorge Harris’s confectionery store, 2121 Wylie Avenue, Hill District. 1947.

Contents

• General information
• Assignments
• Discussions
• Resources

Schedule

• Week 1 (2024-01-31): Introductions
• Week 2 (2024-02-07): Fan studies
• Week 3 (2024-02-14): Comics culture
• Week 4 (2024-02-21): Paratexts and fan mail
• Week 5 (2024-02-28): Comics in special collections and archives
  (Class will meet at the Lilly Library)
• Week 6 (2024-03-06): Building a corpus
• Spring Break (2024-03-13): No Class.
• Week 7 (2024-03-20): Text analysis
• Week 8 (2024-03-27): Text analysis lab
• Week 9 (2024-04-03): Data sets and visualization
• Week 10 (2024-04-10): Data visualization lab
• Week 11 (2024-04-17): Fanzines and maker culture
• Week 12 (2024-04-24): Fandom on social media