Weekly Reading Schedule
Unit 1: Foundations in Comics, Catastrophe, and Memory
Week 1: Introductions
Thurs. Jan. 14
Watch West Bank Story (in class)…
Week 2: Understanding Mythic Groundings and the Medium of Graphic Narrative
Tues. Jan. 19
Maus I
*Rowland and Frank, “Mythic Rhetoric and Rectification in the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict” in Communication Studies p. 1-17 (available on BB)
Study Questions: What are some of Spiegelman’s key concerns in writing these texts? How is his father depicted? What images pop up over and over again? Why read a Holocaust text in a course about conflicts in Israel-Palestine? What is mythic rectification? What is entelechial development? How are Rowland and Frank defining myth and why is it important for this class on graphic narrative? What are some of the common topoi connected to the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts? How does Spiegelman employ/challenge them?
Thurs. Jan 21:
Maus II
Rothberg’s “ ‘We Were Talking Jewish’”: Art Speigelman’s ‘Maus’ as ‘Holocaust’ Production
Contemporary Literature 35:4 (1994) 661-687. (available on canvas)
*close reading of Maus (available on Canvas)
Study Questions: Why are we reading Maus in a course about Israel-Palestine? What does Rothberg’s critical essay suggest?
Week 3: What is Nakba?
Tues. Jan 26
Muhammed Suleiman’s “We Shall Return” p.113-119 (Canvas)
Lilu Abu-Loghod and Ahmad H. Sa’di’s “Introduction” to Nakba: Palestine, 1948, and the Claims of Memory p. 1-24 (Canvas)
*Jasinski on Identification (available on Canvas)
Study Questions: What is identification? What is Nakba? How might it be related to the Holocaust? Why are we learning about these historical topics together?
Recommended Further Reading:
Eisner, Will. Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative
McCloud, Scott. Reinventing Comics: How Imagination and Technology are Revolutionizing an Art Form
Thurs. Jan. 28 Developing Critical Vocabulary/Visualizing Nakba
McCloud’s Understanding Comics Ch 1- 4, p.1-117
Leila Abdelrazaq’s Baddawi– Paige response paper
Study Questions: What is sequential art? What are some of the tools we can use to analyze sequential art? How does it work on an audience? Pick a passage from the Spiegelman or Abdelrazaq and apply one of McCloud’s concepts to help you analyze the work it does. Even though Suleiman’s narrative is not graphic, see if some McCloud’s concepts help you to do a close reading of it.
Recommended Further Reading:
Vice’s interview with Abdelrazaq http://www.vice.com/read/the-graphic-novel-baddawi-is-like-a-palestinian-persepolis-111
Abdelrazaq’s website http://lalaleila.com/ABOUT
Week 4: Boning Up on History-in-the-Making/Introduction to Competing Narratives
Tuesday Feb. 2
Continue discussion of Baddawi
Contextualizing Holocaust and Nakba in identity formation
McCloud Understanding Comics Ch. 5- end p.118-215
Thurs. Feb. 4
Discuss Dowty Ch 1-4 p 1-112
“Introduction: Two Worlds Collide”
“The Jewish Story”
“The Arab Story”
“The Emergence of Israel”
Study Questions: How does Dowty characterize the Jewish and Arab stories, respectively? What are some key narrative features? What are some key historical dates and why?
Unit 2 Visualizing Competing Narratives in Israel/Palestine
Week 5: Visualizing Jerusalem: A City Divided
Tues. Feb 9
Contextualizing Presentation—Critical Reception/Context of Delisle
Contextualizing Presentation—Who are Palestinian Jerusalemites?
response paper due Chelsea
Discuss Delisle’s Chronicles of Jerusalem (p. 1-201)
Study Questions: How does Delisle’s use of the page compare to Spiegelman’s and Abdelrazaq’s? How do their perspectives shift the way you think about the terrain? What are similarities/differences between their texts? How do McCloud’s tools help you to think about these questions about representation? What kind of “mythic” narratives find their way into Delilse’s representation of Jerusalem?
Recommended Further Reading:
Burke, Kenneth. “Terministic Screens” in Language as Symbolic Action p. 44-6
——————. Perspectives by Incongruity
Thurs. Feb. 11
Contextualizing Presentation—Who are Christian Palestinians? Hannah
Contextualizing Presentation—Who are the Samaritans?
Discuss Chronicles of Jerusalem (p. 201-end) Response paper due Hannah
Autobiographical Travel Writing
Max Blumenthal’s “A Day in the Life of the Rudorens”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v14M5sGxTC4
“Candid Video reveals NYT Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren’s Zionist Bubble”
http://electronicintifada.net/content/candid-video-reveals-nyt-bureau-chief-jodi-rudorens-zionist-bubble/13685
Jalal Abukater’s “The Side of Jerusalem the New York Times Ignores”
http://electronicintifada.net/blogs/jalal-abukhater/side-jerusalem-new-york-times-ignores
Study Questions: What do you learn about Jerusalem, the conflict, and Delisle himself from the text? What is foreign, what is familiar to him and you? Using Rowland and Frank’s terminology, identify the founding “myths” at play. What is Zionism? What’s at stake in the names “War of Independence” vs. “An-Nakba?” How does Abdelrazaq’s text differ from Spiegelman’s and Delilse’s? How is it similar to it? How does the medium of comics impact the genres of history vs. travel narrative vs. autobiography?
Recommended Further Reading
Delisle, Guy. Shenzhen: A Travelogue from China
—————. Pyongyang: A Journey in North Korea
David Gershon-Harris, What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife?
Study Questions: Using Rowland and Frank’s terminology, identify the founding “myths” at play. What is Zionism? What’s at stake in the names “War of Independence” vs. “An-Nakba?” How does Abdelrazaq’s text differ from Spiegelman’s and Delilse’s? How is it similar to it? How does the medium of comics impact the genres of history vs. travel narrative vs. autobiography?
Week 6: Narrativizing War/Comics as Historical Texts
Tues. Feb. 16
*Chute, Hillary. “Comics as Literature: Reading Graphic Narrative” p. 452-466
Review/Go over Critical Precis assignment
Study Questions: How does White’s understanding of genre affect the way you think about these graphic texts? What would the White look like if we put it through a McCloud sieve; i.e. how can you change White’s concepts to fit McCloud’s medium of comics? How does Chute’s definition of genre interact with White’s conceptions? Does her argument about trauma confirm, complicate, or overturn your reading of Baddawi or Maus?
Recommended Further Reading
White, Hayden. Tropics of Discourse: Essays in Cultural Criticism
*White, Hayden. “Interpretation in History”
Esp. Ch. 3, “The Historical Text as Literary Artifact”
Morris, Benny. Righteous Victims
Fatema (Graphic/Animated Video)
Thurs. Feb. 18
Contextualizing Presentation: Deir Yassin
Discuss Khirbet Khizeh Response Paper due Kee
Shai Ginsberg’s “S. Yizhar’s Khirbet Khizeh and the Rhetoric of Conflict”
Study Questions: How does this text employ visuals? How does Yizhar’s representation mesh with or challenge the representations in Baddawi? How does Ginsberg’s analysis corroborate or complicate Frank and Rowland’s vision of rhetorical analysis?
Week 7: Visualizing Difficult Memory
Tues. Feb. 23
Critical Precis of Chute’s “Comics as Literature: Reading Graphic Narrative” p. 452-466 DUE
Contextualizing Presentation– Rhetorical/Historical Importance of the 67 War Jacob
Contextualizing Presentation—IDF and Israeli Ethos
Discuss Shifting Political Atmosphere post-67
Dowty Ch. 5-6, p 113-172,
“The Re-Emergence of the Palestinians”
“The First Past at Peace”
Rowland/Frank Ch. 3- 7 p. 35-153
“The Birth of the Symbolic Systems of Labor and Revisionist Zionism”
“The Symbolic Construction of the Palestinian People”
“Symbolic Trajectories in the Development of Labor and Revisionist Zionism”
“The Essential Palestinian”
“From Camp David to Lebanon”
Mahdi Fliefel and Basel Nasr’s “Filsteezy” short comic (available on Canvas)
Study Questions: What are the symbolic systems of Labor and Revisionist Zionism? What are the key narratives that feature in each? What are the key narratives in Palestinian discourse during this period?
Recommended Further Reading:
Rashid Khalidi’s Palestinian Identity: The Construction of Modern National Consciousness
————-, The Iron Cage: The Story of the Palestinian Struggle for Statehood
Watch Waltz With Bashir
Thurs. Feb. 25
Short Writing Assignments Due (by this point everyone will have turned in their short writing response) Jacob–response paper to Exit Wounds due
Mid-term review
Lauren response paper to Palestine due
Presentation—Historical Background to the First Lebanon War (Focus on Sabra and Shatilla) Chelsea
Presentation—Historical Background to the Second Lebanon War-
Function of Memory
(By this point, everyone should have written and turned in a reading response.)
Study Questions: How is memory figured in the film? What are the problems associated with it, and how does the film attempt to solve/represent them?
Week 8: Memory, Military Ethos, the Mundane
Tues. Mar. 1
Contextualizing Presention—Miriam Libicki/Critical Reception
Contextualizing Presentation—Mizrachi Jews and Israeli Black Panthers–Ki
Discuss Jobnik!
*Libicki’s “Towards a Hot Jew: The Israeli Soldier as Fetish Object” (Available on BB)
Study Questions: What values, ideas, assumptions are associated with the topos of “the Israeli solider”? How does this notion challenge or support stereotypes of Jews? How does Libicki’s text challenge or support these ideas about both Jews and soldiers? How does her graphic autobiography compare to Sacco’s? What do you notice about the way she uses panels?
Recommended Further Reading:
Jobnick! Issues 7, 8, 9
Thurs. Mar. 3
Mid-term Quiz In-Class
Take-Home Essay Distributed
Reading Response Comments Returned
Week 9: Literaturizing Conflict
Tues. March 8
Research Workshop–we will meet in W. T. Young Library
Recommended Reading
Discuss Shani Boianjiu’s “Means of Suppressing Demonstrations” in the New Yorker
http://www.newyorker.com/fiction/features/2012/06/25/120625fi_fiction_boianjiu
Study Questions: How does Boianjiu’s depiction of the Israeli military compare to Libicki’s? What do you think the story is trying to communicate about relationships between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians? How do her representations of sexual relations compare to Libicki’s? What connections do you make between sexuality and military rule?
Thurs. March 10
Contextualizing Presentation –Israeli Druze-Laura
Contextualizing Presentation—Ethiopian Jews in Israel–Paige
Discuss Dowty Ch 7 -177-206
“The Fourth Stage of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”
Rowland/Frank Ch 8-9 p 159-207
“From Occupation to Intifada” p 159-179
“Symbolic Stagnation and Ideological Calcification in Israel” p 179-207
Take Home Essay Due
Recommended Further Reading and Screenings
Davidson, Willing. “This Week in Fiction: Shani Boianjiu”
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/06/this-week-in-fiction-shani-boianjiu.html
Beaufort
Yossi and Jaggar
Springbreak springbreak springbreak springbreak March 14-18
Week 10: Graphic Journalism and the First Intifada
Tues March 22
Lauren
Presentation—Critical Reception of Sacco’s Palestine
Discuss Sacco’s Palestine (p. 1-202)
Study Questions: What is the difference between graphic journalism and graphic novels? What kind of narrator is Sacco? What role do women play in this text?
Thurs. March 24
Discuss Sacco’s Palestine (p. 202-end)
*Libicki’s Jobnick! Manifesto
Study Questions: How is the text different from Footnotes in Gaza? How and why might Jobnick! be read as a response to Palestine? Why does Libicki respond in the way she does? How might you compare and contrast Libicki’s and Sacco’s texts?
Mid-terms Returned
Research Proposals Due
Recommended Further Reading:
A Child in Palestine: The Cartoons of Naji al-Ali
Chris Hedges and Joe Sacco’s Days of Destruction Days of Revolt
Brook Gladstone’s The Influencing Machine
Week 11: Critical Jewish Ethos
Tues. March 29—
Presentation—What is Birthright Israel/Taglit?
Glidden’s How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less
Study Questions: How does Glidden’s representation of herself compare to Delilse’s, Sacco’s, or Libicki’s? To what extent can we consider this a travel narrative, a bildungsroman, something else? We’ve now read the graphic narratives of several female authors (Abdelrazaq, Modan, Libicki, now Glidden)—what elements do you notice these texts share in common (if any)? How do they differ (if at all) from the male-authored graphic narratives?
Recommended Further Reading
Leonard Saxe and Barry Chazan’s, Ten Days of Birthright Israel: A Journey in Young Adult Identity
Shaul Gilner, The Tours That Bind
Thurs. March 31
Research Proposals Returned with Comments
Glidden Discussion Continued
Study Questions: What are the symbolic reasons for the impasse, according to Rowland and Frank? What are the key Palestinian Myths that led up to Oslo? What is Symbolic Stasis? How might symbol use/revision help bring about a change to the conflict?
Recommended Further Reading:
Dowty Ch 8-9 220-265
“The Impasse that Remains”
“The Perfect Conflict”
Rowland Frank Ch 10-13 p 207-283
“Palestinian Symbolic Trajectories to Oslo”
“Palestinian Myth and the Reality of Oslo”
“From Symbolic Stasis to the End of Revisionism”
“Symbol Use and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”
Beinart, Peter. The Crisis of Zionism.
Gorenberg, Gershom. The Unmaking of Israel.
UNIT 3: Rewriting/ReImagining Trauma and Terrorism
Week 12: Everyday Life Under Conflict
Tues. April 5
Discuss Exit Wounds
Study Questions: What role does the conflict play in this narrative? Why do you think it occupies this space? How does Modan’s style compare to the other authors we’ve read this semester? How does it reflect the concepts discussed in Rowland and Frank?
Thurs. April 7
Watch and Discuss 17th Killed
Study Questions: How does watching this documentary change the way you read Exit Wounds?
Study Questions: What surprised you about this film? Structurally, what is different about this film’s point of view? Keeping Hayden White in mind, how do the genres of documentary and graphic novel impact the representation of a specific suicide bombing?
Study Questions: How are the affordances of film similar to or different from graphic narrative? What do they help you understand better? What do they obscure?
Week 13: Documenting Terrorism/Focus on Writing
Tues. April 12
Watch Paradise Now
*Jamilti
Thurs. April 14
No Class–Writing Day–use this time to finish up the first submission of your final essays, go to the Writing Center, and do what you need to turn in the best possible essay on Tues!
Week 14: Changing Identifications/Focus on Writing
Tues. April 19
Final Papers Due
Peer Review Due by 5:00 pm
Thurs. April 21:
Finish watching Paradise Now
Discuss Paradise Now and the 17th Killed
Week 15: Focus on Gaza and Contemporary Conflict
Tues. April 26—
Contextualizing Presentation—Harvey Pekar/JT Waldman
Evaluations
Discuss Pekar and Waldman’s Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me
Study Questions: How does this text compare to the other graphic narratives we’ve read this semester. How is the ethos of Pekar similar to/different from that of Libicki or Glidden? What do the authors mean when they talk about self-hating Jews? What kind of introduction to the conflict does the text give you, compared to say that of Dowty or Rowland/Frank?
First Submissions Returned with Comments
Conferences with Dr. Jan
Thurs. April 28—
Discussion of Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me Continued
Recommended further reading:
Selections from Gaza Writes Back: Short Stores from Young Writers in Gaza, Palestine
Refaat Alareer’s “On a Drop of Rain” p. 89-92
——————— “House” p. 125-137
Jehan Alfarra’s “Please Shoot to Kill” p. 93-106
Shahd Awadallah’s “Once Upon a Dawn” p. 153-163
Etgar Keret’s “Pastrami” http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/pastrami
Koren Shadmi’s “Snapshots from Israel”
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/08/06/opinion/opart-snapshots-from-Israel.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=c-column-top-span-region®ion=c-column-top-span-region&WT.nav=c-column-top-span-region&_r=0
Eli Valley’s “What if Mahmoud Was Named Jonah?”
http://972mag.com/comic-what-if-mahmoud-was-jonah/93839/
——–, “Google Glass for the Gaza Gaze”
http://972mag.com/comic-google-glass-for-the-gaza-gaze/94315/
———, “Gaza Exit Interview”
http://972mag.com/comic-gaza-exit-interview/95103/
Study Questions: What do we learn about the Gaza Conflicts based on these representations? What strikes you about Valley’s visuals?
Rawan Yaghi’s “Spared” p. 49-53
Sarah Ali’s “The Story of the Land” p. 59-65
Nour Al-Sousi’s “Will I Ever Get Out? P. 71-75
Nour El Borno’s “A Wish for Insomnia” p. 77-81
———, “Weisel Weaponized” http://972mag.com/wp-content/uploads//2014/08/Eli.Valley.Wiesel.Weaponized.jpg
Tues. May 3- Final Papers Due by 9:30 am