Midterm Paper Directions and Topics

Midterm Paper –Due Date Nov 1             Engl 3084

General Directions: Write a 6-7 page paper addressing one of the following.  Below, please find a number of questions focusing on the works we’ve read during the first half of the term.  It’s important that your readings from Scott McCloud factor into your essay.  Use the terminology McCloud introduces in Understanding Comics to unpack the particularities of the text you choose to explore.  You may also want to use scanned or photocopied images to support your argument.  These images will be in addition to the 6 page minimum, rather than a part of the 6 pages. We can discuss how to “quote” from images. If you would like to use other theoretical sources on comics, I can help you find them.

Some general guidelines:

Handing in your paper late will lower your grade. As a rule, it is good to avoid using the first person in a formal paper.  Be certain to use spelling and grammar check on your computer; I am expecting that I will not have to focus unduly on this aspect of your writing when grading your work.  Back up your arguments with quotes from the reading and properly cite these quotes in MLA format.  If you have questions about citation practice, there are a number of online resources that can help you and I am happy to give you input, as well.  If you wish to work on a topic not listed below, just make sure to discuss it with me before beginning the work so we ensure it is narrow enough to fit within such a short paper.  I would be pleased to meet with you over the course of the next weeks to discuss your midterm paper if it would be helpful. Do not plagiarize! I am expecting that you won’t, but, if you do, it results in an automatic “F.”

Maus:

1. History, both global and personal, plays a large role in Maus. What is the relationship between personal history and global history in this text? How does Spiegelman balance narration of personal history and larger world historical events? How is the loss of his mother’s diary used as a thread to connect these two forms of history? How do the different genres evident in Spiegelman’s text – testimony, oral narrative, maps – work to do the same? Using specific examples, talk about how Spiegelman’s narrative choice to interweave losses both personal and large-scale works in Maus.

2. We mentioned in our discussion online that artists who wish to represent the Holocaust and the havoc it wreaked on its victims and survivors have a daunting task.  How does Spiegelman’s choice to represent the Holocaust in the form of a graphic novel allow him to address/ not address these questions of representation? Does the pictorial form of the graphic novel provide Spiegelman with a way of meditating on questions of representation? If so, how? Give specific examples and explain how they link to the larger issues surrounding representation of trauma.

3. Framing devices are very important to how we read and understand Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Most significant of the framing devices in the text is Art’s relationship with Vladek, which structures how we, as readers, interpret the novel, comprised as it is of testimony he collects from his aging Holocaust survivor father.  Keeping the importance of framing devices in Spiegelman’s work in mind, what do you make of the epigraphs that begin each volume of Maus? How do they work to introduce and structure our reading of the text? How do they create or disrupt continuity between the volumes? Use Spiegelman’s epigraphs to explore Maus and the role of framing in the text.

4. Art Spiegelman’s choice to portray the conflict between Nazi and Jew in World War II era Europe as a battle between cat and mouse drew much attention when Maus was published.  How does Spiegelman’s use of animals to represent national or ethnic types work in Maus?  Use close readings of a few scenes in the text to explain how Spiegelman’s animal characters allow him to comment on the historical circumstances of the war and the place of racial-thinking in it.

Persepolis:

1.      Both Maus and Persepolis are memoirs written in graphic narrative form.  However, Spiegelman and Satrapi’s narratives differ in key ways.  How does Satrapi’s choice to frame the story of the Islamic Revolution in Iran through the eyes of a child affect your reading of her story?  How does this choice contrast with Spiegelman’s more cynical, by-proxy narrative of the Holocaust?  How do Spiegelman and Satrapi use imagery differently/ similarly?

2.      Satrapi’s Persepolis proves unique in the comics genre because it is centered on the viewpoint of a female child and, later, young woman.  How does gender factor into your experience of Persepolis?  Does Satrapi suggest something about the ways in which revolutions affect women in particular? How does Satrapi’s focus on female experience challenge our idea about the conventions of comics?

3.      Persepolis is very much a narrative about place and the role it plays in the formation of identity.  The characters in Satrapi’s memoir struggle to stay in a chaotic homeland or deal with the complexities of exile.  How does Satrapi use the physical space of the comic to comment on the power of geography during a period of social tumult?

Incognegro:

1.      Incognegro foregrounds the experience of passing in American culture.  What sorts of passing take place in the graphic narrative and how do Johnson and Pleece use the visual nature of the medium to make a commentary on the optics of race and the discourse of visibility in America?  How might Chaney-Lopez’s piece on the construction of race be useful in reading this text?

2.      Johnson begins Incognegro with a foreword, just as Satrapi begins Persepolis.  How do these forewords frame your reading of the texts to come? How are they similar? How different? What about the form of the graphic narrative seems to encourage this type of explanation?

3.      Incognegro depicts a number of scenes of lynching.  How do Pleece and Johnson choose to depict this racialized violence? How do their illustrations compare/ not compare to the many photographs of lynching that were disseminated during the same time period?

Stuck Rubber Baby:

1.      In Stuck Rubber Baby, Howard Cruse compares the civil rights movement with burgeoning movements around GLBT rights. What point does he make in this comparison? How does the graphic medium allow him to draw out this comparison? How does his work illustrate the theme of intersectionality as articulated by Crenshaw?

2.      Stuck Rubber Baby is one of the earliest works we’re reading in class. How does it mark the early days of the graphic narrative/ graphic novel movement? How does it compare to other books we’ve read stylistically and thematically? Pick one other text and make a detailed comparison.

King:

1.      We are used to seeing photographic representations and cinematic images of Martin Luther  King, Jr. How does Ho Che Anderson use these images to create his visual narrative in King? How does King’s iconic status affect the way we read Anderson’s graphic depictions?  Does the comics version of King expand the conventional narrative of his life?

2.      While both Maus and Persepolis deal with ethnicity and national identity in different ways, King is the first work we’re reading that explicitly deals with questions of race and American culture.  Explain how the visual nature of Anderson’s text provides a commentary on race relations during King’s time.