In your short response, you should respond to the Huyssen Mass Culture Reading and offer some sustained reflection and engagement with the thorny political, ethical, and artistic horizons of comics art. Be sure to include an image or a specific reference to a work of art from class, and explain why that work seems significant. I recommend even pasting an image or copying a quotation at the top of your short response, and then writing or drawing/writing below in reference to that image or quotation. That will help ground your response in class materials.
Overall Paper Topic: How has the work of the comics artist and the value of comics art been imagined and represented?
Some questions to consider:
What do you think the categories of “comics” or “high / low art” mean?
What kinds of artistic, cultural, political, or social connotations does the label of “comics” imply?
What does it mean to think of comics as a part of modern and contemporary art, and how does taking comics into account change the history we might tell about modern and contemporary art?
What qualities or styles seem to distinguish some comics as “art,” and other comics as “popular culture”?
Short responses do not need to be written as formal analysis papers. Feel free to use the first or third person voice, write about your opinions about class materials, and think through your writing in ways that don’t necessarily end with clear conclusions.
