Group YouTube Project

This project is an opportunity to work collaboratively on an engaging project that promotes understanding of "studying comics as literature."

In seminar week one, groups of five will be assigned. Each group will select one from the following list of possible angles of approach and will create a video documentary, to be posted on YouTube by no later than midnight December 6th. A one-page status report of the group's project is due in seminar, course week five.

Here is a list of possible topics. You are free come up with one of your own, subject to the Instructor's written approval. You are also by no means limited to the course texts: but by the same token you may use only the course texts as you prefer.

• graphic novels versus comic books.
• pre-modern precursors of the comic book.
• modern origins of the comic book (England or America?)
• literary analysis of a comic book series.
• Maus as fine art.
• the graphic novel as comic book: no more, no less.
• the irreducible religious nature of the superhero.
• an argument for comics as 'glorious junk.'
• comics in film and TV.
• arguments for or against comics as social bane.
• the contribution of Mad magazine to c omics as literature.
• the visual element of the comic book.

The length of your documentary should be anywhere from ten to sixty minutes. Quantity is not the salient matter; quality of effort is. And effort can be precisely guaged here: the assignment is twenty percent of the course grade, and with five members per group the total group project effort will be 5 X 20% of the course effort.