Journalistic and Documentary Comics
Freestanding course
About the course
This is a distance course with two separate weeks of on-site work in Malmö, during which students learn how to plan, prepare, and execute journalistic and documentary comics of their own; also they learn how to interpret and assess comics in these genres. To be able to do this, the course introduces principles of journalism and documentation and reflects on practical, ethical, and cultural implications of comics journalism. Everybody on the course will produce documentary and journalistic comics after introductory and specialist workshops. The course aims to provide and develop methods for analysis of individual comics and comics-corpora as a source for academic research. The course will be taught in English.
Experience in drawing, journalism, storytelling etc. is not necessary, but an advantage. The course is intended for students who want to communicate in sequential images and texts. It is our belief that everybody can learn to do this. To be able to participate and benefit from the course, some existing experience in academic studies is required (30 HP in an unspecified subject).
Course content
The course introduces to the theory and practice of comics analysis and comics production. These are applied and developed further with a focus on comics for documentation and journalism.
The course is divided into three parts:
1. Introduction to visual narrative structure, and to the basics of comics journalism / documentary comics. (8 hp)
2. Comics cultures and their implications for comics journalism / documentary. Continuation on comics journalism / documentary. (8 hp)
3. Individual documentary / journalistic project that must contain pictorial sequential storytelling (topic chosen in dialogue with supervisor) (8 hp) and written report, connecting the project to comics theory and cultural theory. (6 hp)
Syllabus and course literature
You can find a list of literature in the syllabus, along with other details about the course.
Entry requirements and selection
Entry requirements
30 university credits.
Selection
34% Upper Secondary Grades - 34% Swedish Scholastic Aptitude Test (SweSAT) - 32% University Credits
Course evaluation
The University provides students who participate in or who have completed a course with the opportunity to make known their experiences and viewpoints with regards to the course by completing a course evaluation administered by the University. The University will compile and summarize the results of course evaluations as well as informing participants of the results and any decisions relating to measures initiated in response to the course evaluations. The results will be made available to the students (HF 1:14).
