Literature for Fun Home, Blankets or Stuck Rubber Baby

Dear folks,

I intend to write my Examensarbeit on Teaching Graphic Novels and am currently doing my literature research. If anybody has any useful suggestions about books/articles about Fun Home, Blankets or Stuck Rubber Baby which I could use for my work, I would be extremely thankful, if they could publish their sources here so that I can check them.

For those of you who are also still working on their papers, here are the texts I used for my paper on Fun Home:

• Bosman, Ellen. Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgendered Literature. Westport, Conn.: Libraries Unlimited, 2008.
• Bristow, Joseph. “‘A complex multiform creature’: Wilde’s sexual identities” Cambridge Companion to Oscar Wilde. Ed. Peter Raby. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 195-218.
• Chute, Hillary. “An Interview with Alison Bechdel.” Modern Fiction Studies 52.4 (Winter 2006): 1004-1013.
• Gardner, Jared. “Autography’s Biography, 1972-2007.“ Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 31.1 (Winter 2008): 1-26.
• Nünning, Ansgar (ed.). Metzler Lexikon Literatur- und Kulturtheorie. Ansätze – Personen – Grundbegriffe. Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 2001.
• Saxey, Esther. Homoplot. The Coming-Out Story and Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Identity. New York: Peter Lang, 2008.
• Schüwer, Martin. “Teaching Comics: Die unentdeckten Potenziale der grafischen Literatur.” Der Fremdsprachliche Unterricht Englisch 73 (January 2005). 2-7.
• Sinfield, Alan. The Wilde Century. London: Cassel, 1994.
• Watson, Julia. “Autographic Disclosures and Genealogies of Desire in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home.” Biography: An Interdisciplinary Quarterly 31.1 (Winter 2008): 27-58.

Reddition

The latest issue of the German magazine Reddition: Zeitschrift für Graphische Literatur fouses on comics and literature. It includes articles on Fun Home and Maus.

Alison Bechdel meets Craig Thompson

Click here for the whole conversation.

“Teaching homosexuality” – Group Fun Home II

For those who are interested, here are some of the school-projects we mentioned in our presentation:

“different pupil” by “different people eV. Chemnitz”

• = motto: clarification for anyone who wants to!

• Training for teachers: facts about LGBT – people, development of social and methodological competences, increasing the possibilities of taking action in schools
• Training for students: gaining information about LGBT- people in workshops, eliminating fears and insecurities in the dealing of homosexuality, methods for the reduction of prejudices, debating on discrimination and harassment, creating a tolerant atmosphere
• http://www.different-people.de/

“Schule der Vielfalt” eine Kampagne in NRW

• an initiative of SchLAu NRW (Schwule und Lesbische Aufklärung in NRW) and Landeskoordination Anti- Gewalt Arbeit NRW
• stands up for no homophobia at schools
• provides several ideas for teaching modules, methods for teaching, media material for teaching homosexuality
• http://www.schule-der-vielfalt.de/

Last session

Because next week we will have the last session in the semester and we still meet at 8 o’ clock in the morning I want to suggest that we all bring some cake or fruit or other stuff to share. Simon Dickel kindly offered to make some coffee, we just need to bring cups (and I will also bring some paper dishes, because we still have some left).

See you all next week.

Fun Home (Thursday group) discussion on Oscar Wilde and Fun Home

As we could not finish (or even really start) the discussion on the intertextual reference to Oscar Wilde in Fun Home, this leaves us with a few tasks for next week. It would be great if you could re-read chapter 6 (or at least pages 165-167, where you can stop after the first panel) and think about the following questions:

1. How does Alison Bechdel construct the literary reference to The Importance of Being Earnest (pp. 165-167)?
2. How does she link Oscar Wilde and his play The Importance of being Earnest to Bruce Bechdel?
3. Does Bechdel provoke the reader to think anything in particular?
Further study questions:
As Bechdel has stated in the interview with Hilary Chute, she tried to reclaim literature for herself (“In some ways I felt like he ruined literature for me, so this was sort of a way of coming back and reclaiming it for myself“. (Chute 1005))

4.Do you think she tries to do that within the given three pages (165-167) (or in chapter 6)?

Just to give you the chance to re-read the whole part from Hillary Chute’s interview with Alison Bechdel:

I did all kinds of research. A lot of reading in particular. I haven’t talked so much about that; people are interested more, I think, in the image research. One whole strand of the book is my father’s love of literature, and the particular novels and authors that he liked. As I worked on the book I found this material creeping more and more into what I was writing. I was quoting Camus and Fitzgerald and eventually I realized that the book was sort of organizing itself around different books or authors; each of the chapters has a different literary focus. That meant doing a lot of reading. Re-reading things I had read before, like Portrait of the Artist or Ulysses; those are big sources for Fun Home. The first and last chapters reference Joyce, like bookends I read a lot of biographies of the people my dad admired: Camus, both Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, Oscar Wilde—a great biography of Oscar Wilde by Richard Ellmann—and a great biography of Proust. I never actually read all of Proust; I just skimmed and took bits that I needed. I really liked doing all this wandering about in books. My dad pressured me a lot to read certain things when I was growing up and I had always resisted it. In some ways I felt like he ruined literature for me, so this was sort of a way of coming back and reclaiming it for myself.

taken from:
Chute, Hillary. “An Interview with Alison Bechdel“. Modern Fiction Studies 52 (2006): 1005.

Ok that is all, hope you are fine with these tasks. Looking forward to seeing you next thursday, Christine.

Blankets

For next week’s presentation about Craig Thompson’s Blankets we would like to ask you to do one of the following tasks:

1. Read a summary of Blankets which you find here.

2. Have a look at Craig Thompson’s blog which you find here.

We want to focus on the different topics as well as on the main chgaracters which are presented in this graphic novel so pay attention to the variety of themes and their appearances while reading either the book itself or the summary.

Fun Home – Group II

In our presentation on Wednesday, we want to focus on the teaching of homosexuality and its representation in fun home.

Therefore, It would be great if you could take another look at the panels which represent gay and lebian lifestyle / sexuality etc. and we would be thankful if you also find the time to read this article.

Rosa Parks

Thursday-Group:

Please watch this clip before our next meeting on thursday, june 2.

Howard Cruse on *Stuck Rubber Baby*

“Here, Cruse talks about his working methods; the video was recorded during the media preview for LitGraphic: The World of the Graphic Novel held on November 9, 2007. His work [was] featured in the exhibition, on view at the Museum through May 26, 2008. Video by Jeremy Clowe for Norman Rockwell Museum. ©2008 Norman Rockwell Museum. All rights reserved.” (Quotation taken from the description of the interview on the website of the Norman Rockwell Museum’s youtube-channel )

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