Our Workshops

Writer as Reader Workshops

Marjane Satrapi’s graphic-narrative Persepolis, a memoir of her youth growing up in Tehran during the 1979 Islamic Revolution and the subsequent eight-year Iran-Iraq war, prompts audiences to rethink received notions about both Iran and the possibilities for the comics genre in the face of Satrapi’s moving presentation of her own fraught personal history amid world-historical tumult. In this workshop, we will read Satrapi’s graphic narrative as a form of personal and historical writing, while we also consider comics art as a powerful vehicle for exploring new ways of framing both memoir and historical documentation. The use of comics art as a serious genre presents many challenges to teachers: How can we understand and teach comics art as a form of literature? What language do we use to speak of comics documentary, which as a form invites first-person identification rather than “objective” critical reflection? And beyond Anglo-European secular values, how can comics art let us understand something as profound (and profoundly different) as the experiences of a young woman who embraces both family and tradition in defiance of rigid traditionalism? Using writing-to-read methods, building a “toolkit” of creative practices for isolating unique elements of comics art, and pairing Persepolis with personal and historical accounts of the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran—and in light of political activism sparked by the events of June 2009—we will explore useful ways of reading Satrapi that encourage critical and inventive responses to graphic narrative more generally.

Texts: Volume I of Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis. Selections from the following texts will be provided: Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, and articles from a variety of sources.

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