Week 1: Introductions

Summary

This week we will go over some of the course basics, syllabus, and assignments. Following that we will begin to explore some basic topics related to studying comic books and their readers. We will discuss some read and discuss some introductory essays about comic book readers, discuss our own experience as comics readers or consumers/fans of other media, and introduce some of the research methods we’ll be exploring this semester.

Weekly Learning Objectives

• Discuss our own experience as comic book readers or consumers/fans of other media.
• identify research methods that may be applied to the study of comic book readership and fandom.
• outline a broad history of the comic book, as presented in Hatfield’s chapter.

Before class: Readings, resources, and tasks

• Hatfield, Charles (2020). Comic Books. Comics Studies: A Guidebook (pp. 25-39). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• Nel, Philip (2020). Children and Comics. Comics Studies: A Guidebook (pp. 126-137). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
• Duncan, R., Smith, M. J., & Levitz, P. (2015). The Comic Book Readers. The Power of Comics (2nd ed.) (pp. 297-326). London: Bloomsbury.

In class

• pre-test
• introductions
• review of syllabus and assignments
• review research methods for studying comic book readership and fandom
• GitHub
• look ahead at week 2