Comics and Graphic Novels in India:

Models of Citizenship
Malini Roy

E-mail: malini.roy@uni-muenster.de

Office hours: Room 051 on Fridays 4-5 pm

Course objectives
This course acquaints students with comics and graphic novels in India, insofar as these
genres/forms have been integral in training young readers into the (professedly) democratic
and secular values of the civil polity. Our reading assignments will include Western comics
such as Tintin featuring representations of India as the exoticised Other, as well as recent
graphic novel retellings of history and mythology aiming at new pathways of identity
formation and the growth of visual and multimodal literacy. We will examine how comics
and graphic novels encode certain expectations of roles, rights, and responsibilities,
especially in the current climate of rapid social and cultural change engendered by the global
economy.
Course syllabus and schedule
28th Oct 01: Introduction to the course
4th Nov 02: Comics and graphic novels in the classroom: uses and benefits
11th Nov 03: Hergé, Tintin in Tibet: representations of South Asia and neighbouring regions
18th Nov 04: Tintin in Tibet: intercultural encounters
25th Nov 05: Response paper on Tintin in Tibet due. Peer-to-peer review.
2nd Dec 06: Johann David Wyss, The Swiss Family Robinson (Campfire Graphic Novels
version): English-language education
9th Dec 07: The Swiss Family Robinson: robinsonade
16th Dec 08: Guidelines: writing the term paper
13th Jan 09: Bharath Murthy, The Vanished Path
20th Jan 10: The Vanished Path: travel literature
27th Jan 11: The Vanished Path: religious conflict and violence
3rd Feb 12: Using images to teach literature
10th Feb 13: Conclusion

Course Requirements
Regular attendance and active participation in classroom discussions is required, as is the
successful completion of the following assignments, details of which will be explained during
the lectures.
• a 500-word response paper
• group work and interactive oral presentations
• a term paper, due within 4 weeks after the last date of class (i.e. on 10th March), e-
mailed to me (2500 or 4500 words, depending on your course of study)
Suggested Reading
Maureen Bakis, The Graphic Novel Classroom, 2012; Carrye Kay Syma & Robert G.
Weiner, eds. Graphic Novels and Comics in the Classroom, 2013; Christian Ludwig & Frank
Erik Pointner, eds. Teaching Comics in the Foreign Language Classroom, 2013