Reading Watchmen Critically
We had a very interesting discussion at the Con's Teaching Comics roundtable about the place of criticism in the comics classroom. I believe the moderator argued for excluding professional or scholarly criticism, in order to encourage the discovery and expression of critical reading tools the students already possess.
While I am very much in favor of this, I was also reminded, during Andrew Edward's superb discussion of Alan Moore's background as a cartoonist, that Watchmen is a monumental work of multiplicity and multivalence, and that much of what it offers in humor, metacomics and comics criticism would be lost on a reader who enters it without tools for uncovering Watchmen's riches.
Someone, and I'm sorry I don't recall who, mentioned an annotated reading guide to Watchmen available on the internet. It's called Watching the Detectives, and can be found here.
I found the roundtable discussion to be riveting. People complained that the allotted hour was too short! Hard to imagine, but I agree. It's the main reason why we're considering a fresh event in the spring, a mini-event between our annual events, to be devoted specifically to the topic of teaching a comics course. The discussants and the facilitator will have much more time, and we'll break the topic down into small sub-topics, e.g. is there a comics canon, what comics must be featured, aren't graphic novels just comics, do you include scholarly works on comics, how does the instructor work with students to discover the critical reading skills already used by students, how to keep costs down, whether to teach cartooning, is this a "literature," "art," or "humanities" course, the value of team teaching, etc.
So, look for announcements regarding Mini Met@Morph! We'll have our website running soon as well, and a beautiful logo.
While I am very much in favor of this, I was also reminded, during Andrew Edward's superb discussion of Alan Moore's background as a cartoonist, that Watchmen is a monumental work of multiplicity and multivalence, and that much of what it offers in humor, metacomics and comics criticism would be lost on a reader who enters it without tools for uncovering Watchmen's riches.
Someone, and I'm sorry I don't recall who, mentioned an annotated reading guide to Watchmen available on the internet. It's called Watching the Detectives, and can be found here.
I found the roundtable discussion to be riveting. People complained that the allotted hour was too short! Hard to imagine, but I agree. It's the main reason why we're considering a fresh event in the spring, a mini-event between our annual events, to be devoted specifically to the topic of teaching a comics course. The discussants and the facilitator will have much more time, and we'll break the topic down into small sub-topics, e.g. is there a comics canon, what comics must be featured, aren't graphic novels just comics, do you include scholarly works on comics, how does the instructor work with students to discover the critical reading skills already used by students, how to keep costs down, whether to teach cartooning, is this a "literature," "art," or "humanities" course, the value of team teaching, etc.
So, look for announcements regarding Mini Met@Morph! We'll have our website running soon as well, and a beautiful logo.
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