This experimental, interdisciplinary course introduces students to the fields of art studio and comparative literature through close reading of literary and visual texts; practices of visual and literary analysis; planning and execution of two-dimensional design projects; and translation of ideas across media. Emphasis on identifying and creating corollary relationships between formal features of literary text and visual design elements (such as line, shape, texture, value, color, space). Focus on developing and strengthening skills in textual analysis and two-dimensional design thinking as well as strategies for creative problem-solving, interdisciplinary thinking, and hands-on making.

What is “literary and media activism”? And what does it mean to “call for change” through new forms of media? How does the relationship between “literature” and “social movements ” challenge our understanding of media as an agent of change in the global present? Beginning with readings from the Green Belt Movement in Africa, the Nation of Islam in Chicago, to the Civil Rights Movement and Hashtag Black Lives Matter in the US, and other reform movements in global South, this course explores the understudied relationship between literary activism and social media movements that expose multiple systems of oppression and discrimination. Using a comparative lens of analysis, the course investigates how literature and media illuminate the local incentives and underpinnings of contemporary social movements, and the reasons behind their global rise or regional demise.