FREN 5110 French-Language Comics (la bande dessinée)

Graduate-level exploration of a prominent form of literary and artistic expression in the French-speaking world taught by Dr. Catherine Labio, Associate Professor of English at CU Boulder and a native speaker of French.

Black and white comic-style depiction of a vortex

Sub-topics include:

  • The formal characteristics of bande dessinée, from the composition of the page to the material dimensions of the book and other media
  • The history of bande dessinée (from medieval manuscripts to 19th-century predecessors to 20th-century Franco-Belgian classics to works from the wider francophone world and recent avant-garde creations)
  • The socio-cultural status of bande dessinée and the pros and cons of linguistic, national, and regional approaches to the study of comics
  • The French-language scholarship on bande dessinée and comics more generally since the 1960s
  • Transmedial experiments involving painting, photography, dance, architecture, and installation art

View flyer here!

For questions please reach out to labio@colorado.edu.