JWST 350 - Confronting Modernity

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

Topic for 2018/19b: Jews, Comics, and Graphic Novels. An in-depth exploration of the contributions of Jewish writers and artists to the field of comics and graphics novels from historical, regional, and topical perspectives. Issues and texts may include: Jews, Assimilation, Aniconism, and the Comics: the Jewish creation of the American superhero (Superman, Funnyman, and the Golem); Reading/Writing in Jewish: satire from a Jewish eye (Jules Feiffer’s Voice comics); Gender: Second Wave feminism and the rise of the Jewish woman’s graphic novel (Aline Kominsky’s Love that Bunch and Diane Noomin’s Didi Glitz), contemporary women’s graphic art (Keren Katz’s “My Skeleton Week,” Liana Finck’s A Bintel Brief, and Vanessa Davis’s Make Me a Woman); History: reimagining the great migration (Leela Corman’s Unterzakhn), comics and the Holocaust (Spiegelman’s Maus); Place: the graphic novel from and in Israel (Rutu Modan’s The Property and Miriam Libicki’s Jobnik!), Jewish comics and urban nostalgia (Ben Katchor’s Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer), Jews in Europe and Northern Africa (Joann Sfar’s The Rabbi’s Cat). Materials also include criticism and theory from media and comics studies, among other approaches. Peter Antelyes.

One 2-hour period.