Literature: Reading comic books for credit

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College is not just for the geeky study of math, science, and high literature anymore. This man, Dr. Shaun Treat, also wants to teach your children the geeky subject of comic books. Invasion by pop culture into academia is nothing new. Bowling Green has become infamous for it. The latest example is Treat’s class on “Mythic Rhetoric of the American Superhero” scheduled for the fall at the University of North Texas.

Dr. Treat

Hiya Manny, thanks for the blurb… I think.

FYI, comics have graduated from “geeky” kid stuff to full blown literature (‘Maus’ won a pulitzer), and the course will use superhero mythos as a distincly American synechdote for politics, philosophy, virtue ethics, national identity, and even social theory.

Students often struggle to read Nietzsche or Machiavelli or Hobbes, but when the ideas wear tights and a cape to fight evil on the big screen then suddenly these “Ivory Tower” theorists become both interesting and relevant!