Online | Open-Genre | Seminar

6-Week Online Open-Genre Seminar: Illustrated Literature

In this six-week online generative seminar, we’ll look at different types of illustrated literature and create our own illustrated works inspired by them.

Students will prepare for each class by doing a reading from texts including Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, Leanne Shapton’s Guest Book, Grace Miceli’s How to Deal, and Mira Jacob’s Good Talk. In class, Harmon will deliver a brief lecture on the reading—and other works of a similar type—followed by a class discussion. After each class, students will produce one-page illustrated works based on the discussion, which they will present for group critique during the next class. Students will not receive detailed written feedback from the instructor or their classmates; everyone’s workshop will be “cold,” meaning everyone will hear and see the work up for discussion for the first time in the class meetings.

This class is open to writers and artists at all experience levels.

Class meetings will be held over video chat, using Zoom accessed from your private class page. While you can use Zoom from your browser, we recommend downloading the desktop client so you have access to all platform features.

COURSE TAKEAWAYS:

- Explore the breadth of illustrated literature beyond the graphic novel, including: illustrated fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and memoir; and work incorporating drawings, paintings, photographs, and more

- Produce your own short, illustrated works

- Final project critique from New York Times graphic novel critic Ed Park

- 10% discount on all future Catapult classes

COURSE EXPECTATIONS:

Students will be expected to prepare for each class by doing an at-home reading and a one-page at-home illustrated writing assignment each week. Students will receive verbal feedback from the instructor and their classmates, but there is no written feedback given in this course.

COURSE SKELETON:

Week 1: The Illuminated Manuscript: William Blake’s Illuminated Books, William Morris’s Kelmscott Chaucer, and Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus

Week 2: The Collaboration: Langston Hughes’s The Sweet Flypaper of Life, Maira Kalman’s Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, and a focus on Claudia Rankine’s Citizen

Week 3: Bricolage: Don Mee Choi’s DMZ Colony, Lilly Dancyger’s Negative Space, and a focus on Leanne Shapton’s Guest Book

Week 4: Self-help: Lynda Barry’s What It Is, Adam J. Kurtz’s Things Are What You Make of Them, and a focus on Grace Miceli’s How to Deal, including a Q&A and critique with guest Grace Miceli

Week 5: Graphic Memoir: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home, and a focus Mira Jacob’s Good Talk

Week 6: Final image-text project critique with New York Times graphic novel critic Ed Park

Forsyth Harmon

Forsyth Harmon is the author and illustrator of the illustrated novel JUSTINE (Tin House, 2021). She is also the illustrator of GIRLHOOD by Melissa Febos and THE ART OF THE AFFAIR by Catherine Lacey, and has collaborated with writers Alexander Chee, Hermione Hoby, Sanaë Lemoine, and Leslie Jamison. Forsyth’s work has been featured in Granta, BOMB, Refinery29, and more. She received an MFA from Columbia University and currently lives in New York.

Testimonials

"She always give the best advice, and I ALWAYS follow it."

former student

"She makes Zoom feel just as intimate and exciting as the classroom."

former student

"As an instructor, Forsyth Harmon manages to be both engaging and informative, authoritative and approachable, deadly serious and very funny."

former student

“Forsyth Harmon is an artist who understands the holy power of longing.”

Melissa Febos

"Harmon's mix of text and image is seamless, intimate, a continuous dream."

Alexander Chee