"Reading happens in all directions," says Hilary Chute about the study of comics and graphic narrative. In this course, students will learn to read images and texts from all directions: up, down, horizontally, vertically, across panels and jacket flaps, in seriality and on the internet. Comics' ability to represent both trauma and the trivial takes students from newspaper funnies to the Holocaust, from superheroes in mid-century floppies to Underground comix and current autobiographical comics, comics journalism, comics history, and fiction.