| 3 | 9/11 | Maus, Book 1, Preface (“Rego Park, NY c. 1958”) and chapter 1 (“The Sheik”)“ & Comics for Grown-Ups” from Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere by HIllary Chute | |
| 9/13 | Maus, Book 1, chapters 2 and 3 & Dan Roam, Draw to Win, chapter 3 (“First Draw a Circle, then Give it a Name”) | Literacy Narrative, part 1 | |
| 9/16 | Sketch 2: Visual Note Taking |
In class yesterday, we discussed and agreed on a set of classroom guidelines, then afterwards I wrote up a post with my understanding of what we agreed upon and settled on three icons to represent the 3 parts of those guidelines. I added an image with the 3 icons to the sidebar which also links to that post. Please read it over and let me know if anything there seems to misrepresent what we agreed upon or if I left off anything important. Also, if at any point in the future those guidelines need updating or if you feel we’re not following them fully, raise the issue in class or let me know.
Don’t forget to post the first sketch assignment, your avatar, by Sunday 9/9. Just log into your WordPress dashboard, create a post, add the image to the post, add the sk1 tag in the tag widget, and publish. As of now, all of you are added to the syndication feed and it is automated so your post should show up in the Student Posts page soon after you publish it to your own site.
Next week we’ll begin to discuss Art Spiegelmann’s Maus. On Tuesday, we’ll focus on the preface and the first chapter, so not many pages of reading. But you’ll also read the introduction to Hillary Chute’s Why Comics?, which just came out last year and is already an important critical analysis of the field of comics. This will be the first piece of academic critical writing you’ll read for this class, so please give it some time and energy — it will likely be a little challenging. Before coming to class on Tuesday, read the essay and think about it. Make a list of three items in preparation for class discussion:
- One claim that confuses you.
- One claim that you find especially intriguing or interesting.
- The central idea or thesis statement for the essay.
On Thursday, we’ll discuss a couple more chapters of Maus, plus you’ll read a chapter from Dan Roam’s Draw to Win, which is a quick read but I think a worthwhile one. Note that the PDF includes chapters 2 & 3, but you are only required to read the latter. The former is also worthwhile though, so you might check it out. (It’s a fair number of pages but they are small pages, with lots of drawings, and written in a very casual, bullet-point style, so it probably won’t take you long to get through.)
The Dan Roam reading should help you in general with drawing tasks, but I think should be especially helpful for your second sketch assignment coming up.
