Learn about Summer 2025 Pre-College opportunities at UMass Amherst. Our residential and online pre-college programs are designed to give you a preview of the UMass student experience, including college-level academics and being part of a learning community of high school students from all across the U.S. and the world. Our programs feature faculty-led courses, state-of-the-art facilities, and the #1 campus dining in the U.S., as ranked by the Princeton Review.
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This course is an introduction to reading and writing the graphic novel, including consideration of the history, narrative structure, aesthetics, and genres of the medium. From the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize to Art Spiegelman’s Maus in 1985 to today, graphic novels have grown in literary and academic recognition and become one of the fastest-growing areas of publishing in the United States. Many films and television shows have been based on comics and graphic novels, and the diversity of creators and the stories they tell have expanded to include multiple genres including autobiography, science fiction and fantasy, and nonfiction works. Graphic novels increasingly explore issues of gender, race, class, and economic and political justice.
This course will explore how graphic novels are created, the creation of scripts or prompts (the “Marvel method”), the collaborations of writers, artists, and editors, and the many types of graphic novels being published today. The course will include visits by guest artists, writers, and scholars of comics and graphic novels, as well as field trips to local museums and galleries related to comics such as the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and to a comic book store. Students will gain a greater understanding of this exciting and ever-growing and developing medium.
Students interested in reading, creative writing, and storytelling through visual arts are invited to apply.
This course is an introduction to reading and writing the graphic novel, including consideration of the history, narrative structure, aesthetics, and genres of the medium. From the awarding of a Pulitzer Prize to Art Spiegelman’s Maus in 1985 to today, graphic novels have grown in literary and academic recognition and become one of the fastest-growing areas of publishing in the United States. Many films and television shows have been based on comics and graphic novels, and the diversity of creators and the stories they tell have expanded to include multiple genres including autobiography, science fiction and fantasy, and nonfiction works. Graphic novels increasingly explore issues of gender, race, class, and economic and political justice.
This course will explore how graphic novels are created, the creation of scripts or prompts (the “Marvel method”), the collaborations of writers, artists, and editors, and the many types of graphic novels being published today. The course will include visits by guest artists, writers, and scholars of comics and graphic novels, as well as field trips to local museums and galleries related to comics such as the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and to a comic book store. Students will gain a greater understanding of this exciting and ever-growing and developing medium.
Students interested in reading, creative writing, and storytelling through visual arts are invited to apply.
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This course is offered at the UMass Amherst campus as a residential program. Local students may apply to attend as a commuter.
N. C. Christopher Couch holds a PhD in art history from Columbia University. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Latin American art and on graphic novels and comic art, including The Will Eisner Companion: The Pioneering Spirit of the Father of the Graphic Novel (with Stephen Weiner), Will Eisner: A Retrospective (with Peter Myer), Faces of Eternity: Masks of the Pre-Columbian Americas, and The Festival Cycle of the Aztec Codex Borbonicus.
He curated exhibitions at the W.E.B. Du Bois Library American Museum of Natural History, the Americas Society, the Oklahoma Air and Space Museum and the Smith College Museum of Art. He was senior editor at Kitchen Sink Press (Northampton), editor in chief at CPM Manga (New York, and has taught at Amherst, Columbia, Hampshire, Haverford, Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges, and the School of Visual Arts. Publications he edited won or were nominated for 17 Eisner and Harvey Awards, and he has held fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Dumbarton Oaks of Harvard University, and the Newberry Library. Current publications include the edited volume Conversations with Harvey Kurtzman, and a book on Batman artist and editorial cartoonist Jerry Robinson.
Dates: une 29 - July 12, 2025
Two-Week Intensives: $3,907 residential / $2,262 commuter
*Program fees listed above include tuition and room & board.
*All programs require submission of $45 application fee.
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