Christy Blanch will be hosting one of the top panels of NEW YORK COMIC FEST — with Scott Snyder, Mark Waid, Denny O’Neil, Dan Goldman, and Shawn Martinbrough!
Here’s Christy’s description. Click here for NYCF’s panel schedule. TICKET INFO HERE. (Times subject to change so make sure you double-check the schedule in the lobby of the Westchester County Center on Saturday!)
Look! Up on the web! It’s a class! It’s a community! It’s SuperMOOC 2!
In the spring of 2013, an online course called Gender through Comics Books was offered by Christina Blanch through her university. This class was open to anyone around the world and it was free except for purchasing some comic books.
With an enrollment of more than 7,000 students, the course was quickly dubbed the SuperMOOC (massive, open, online course) and for six weeks, students read about gender, read comics, watched lectures, discussed issues, and were able to participate in live interviews with creators such as Brian K. Vaughan, Gail Simone, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and Mark Waid.
This course was so successful and due to students wanting more, that with the help of Alter Ego Comics in Muncie, Ind., Christina launched the next course, SuperMOOC 2, Social Issues through Comics Books in the spring of this year.
The course is longer now (5 months) and is covering topics such as immigration, social inequality, the environment, addiction, and the media and information privacy. Live interviews focusing on the module topics include Denny O’Neil, Scott Snyder, Mark Waid, Jason Aaron, Greg Rucka, Warren Ellis, and more. There ere also mystery interviews for student engagement purposes that include Dan Goldman and Brian Wood, among others.
The goal of the class is for students to understand how these topics are social issues that have many angles and how popular culture, in this case comic books, present information on these subjects in positive and negative ways and we can learn from this.
PLUS! Christy’s also hosting a panel on Gender Issues in Comics:
What is gender? Can we see it in comic books? Does gender make a difference in the comic book industry? If you have been paying attention, you know it is making a difference — in both good and bad ways. Learn how we can see gender in comics and how it influences us in how we think of ourselves and others. See the history of the Bechdel test and the more recent sexy lamp test and the pros and cons of both. Join moderator and comic scholar Christy Blanch, comic scholar Dr. Forrest Helvie, writer Ann Nocenti, and artist Shawn Martinsbrough as we explore masculinity, femininity, androgyny, and how ideas of gender have influenced the comics world.
