Will Eisner and His Impact Comparative Literature 393E
N.C. Christopher Couch
Lecturer, B.A., Columbia, 1976; M.A., 1980; Ph.D., 1987
N.C. Christopher Couch has generously shared his syllabus for his Will Eisner course.
Course Description
This course will examine the works of Will Eisner, the innovative comic book artist and writer who created the Spirit, and the father of the graphic novel, an increasingly important artistic and literary medium. It will also examine writers and artists whose work influenced Eisner, or whose work shows the impact of Eisner's career and legacy.
Eisner's career began with the creation of comic book short stories, of which those in The Spirit are the most famous. He then moved to the creation of educational comic books, primarily for the military. In the 1970s, Eisner began the series of graphic novels that would secure his literary reputation outside the field of sequential art, and help to bring about the explosion of creativity in the graphic novel field that continues today. The course will examine Eisner's work both chronologically and thematically, and in terms of the sources of and influences on Eisner's work. In addition, the course will include consideration of Yiddish theater and literature, of American realist fiction, of contemporary writers including Michael Chabon, Jonathan Lethem, Umberto Eco and other novelists and literary historians and theorists.
(Read full syllabus: N.C. Will Eisner.pdf)
N. C. Christopher Couch Ph.D., is the author of numerous books and articles on Latin American art and on graphic novels and comic art, including The Will Eisner Companion: The Pioneering Spirit of the Father of the Graphic Novel (with Stephen Weiner), Will Eisner: A Retrospective (with Peter Myer). He was senior editor at Kitchen Sink Press (Northampton), editor in chief at CPM Manga.
