The German Graphic Novel

This course is an introduction to the history, theory, and social life of German graphic novels. We will look at early examples of text-and-image (Sebastian Brant's "Ship of Fools," a satire published in 1497, Heinrich Hoffmann's "Der Struwwelpeter," an 1845 children's book detailing various forms of misbehavior in spine-chilling visual detail, or Wilhelm Busch's 1895 tale of the mischievous brothers "Max und Moritz") and modern and contemporary comics, political caricatures, and graphic novels from Swiss, German, and Austrian artists (Nicolas Mahler, Gerhard Haderer, Manfred Deix, Ulli Lust, Max Goldt, or Anke Feuchtenberger). No prior knowledge of the topic is required. You will develop your German reading, speaking, and writing skills through a variety of short creative assignments and in-class discussions, develop critical reading skills as they attend to specific formal features, and improve your abilities to think historically about the emergence and development of aesthetic forms. Taught in German. Prerequisite: GERLANG 3 or permission of instructor.