You’ve seen MIT’s open-courseware and perused through Academic Earth, but came up empty-handed when looking for courses on comics. Heading West from MIT to Michigan State University, Prof. Ethan Watrall, has provided a syllabus and course material for his class.

From: HST110H: History of the Modern Comic Book

The History of the Modern Comic Book is designed to provide students with an opportunity to explore the development and current state of comic books.  The course will take a socio-historical approach to the subject, exploring not only the lineage of genres & trends, but the impact that the industry & medium has had on society and vice versa. While the historical foundations of the medium will be briefly explored, the course will focus on the period following the Silver Age.

Required reading is weekly comics and a graphic novel from the instructor’s list. Interestingly, Watchmen is not one of the books you can read for the class, but From Hell is. 30% of your grade is determined from your blog posts, 25% from your final exam score, and 45% of your grade comes from your graphic novel paper/presentation. So, even if you’re bad at tests you can get a ‘C’ in the class by acing your posts and presentation and not take the final.

If you’re a Michigan State student looking to enroll in one more class for the Fall semester, you should check out HST110H: History of the Modern Comic Book.