Professor: Ben Saunders
4 credits
In this class we will take a serious look at some of the most disregarded and dismissed products of American popular culture: Horror Comics and Romance Comics. Our primary texts will be comic books ranging from the 1940s through the 1990s and into the present day. We will test the thesis that genre fictions are popular with readers not because they are more “accessible” than other kinds of art and literature (a common but ultimately dubious assumption) but because they are so vividly emblematic and culturally resonant. We will explore the ways in which Horror and Romance comics tap into profound social and political anxieties even while they present themselves as “mere” entertainments that (supposedly) do not merit close critical attention. We will analyze of shifting representations of gender, sexuality and race over the decades. We will consider the differences imposed by media form when it comes to telling these kinds of tales and delineate the specific ways Horror and Romance comics respond to, incorporate, and diverge from rival media forms such as prose fiction and film, and in the process address the question of how popular comics repeat, revise, and/or resist established genre conventions.
Texts will include:
Selections from classic 1950s Horror and Romance comics (such as Tales From The Crypt and Young Romance), Through the Woods by Emily Carroll, Uzumaki by Junji Ito, Archie comics by various creators, and several more titles.
Assignments *may* include:
A mid-term exam; an in-class presentation; a final project (with both creative and research-essay options).