For much of their history comics have been viewed as disposable entertainment rather than enduring aesthetic achievements, low popular culture rather than high art.  The narrator of Daniel Clowes’s 1991 comic “Art School Confidential” warns readers to “never mention cartooning in art school because it is mindless and contemptible and completely unsuitable as a career goal!”  However, comics in the form of “graphic novels” have found cultural legitimacy as a literary art form.  Yet comics are visual as well as verbal, made of images and text.  In this course we will examine the relationship between comics and fine art, and we will read comics, as well as histories and theories of comics, as we consider whether, and how, we might see comics as art and analyze comics as we do fine art.  HAAVC 3000 seminars continue developing students' visual analysis and research skills while providing students the opportunity for in-depth study of the visual/structural artifacts associated with a particular topic, region, or movement. Students will also engage with the relevant primary/secondary literature for the specific topic/theme. Courses will pay particular attention to the larger cultural, historical, and theoretical/ideological contexts in which the visual artifacts and structures under consideration were created. This course cannot fulfill the HAAVC 2000 requirement.

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