In several recent graphic memoirs, the memoirist includes episodes of going to see a psychoanalyst—e.g., David Small’s Stitches, Art Spiegelman’s Maus, and Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother. In all cases, the interactions are positive, and enable the memoirist to gain insight and motivation. Bechdel’s memoir/autobiography becomes intensely connected to the work of D. W. Winnicott, who is not her therapist but an influential English psychoanalyst who specialized in working with children. He wrote about such matters as play, the good enough mother, and the true and false selves. Bechdel cites him in her second memoir, Are You My Mother? in which psychoanalysis is very much part of the story rather than an incident in it. Indeed, each chapter of the memoir is named after an essay of Winnicott’s.
The course will study this case of Bechdel and Winnicott. We will read three of Bechdel’s memoirs--Fun Home is her first, Are you My Mother? is her second, and The Secret to Superhuman Strength is her third. We will also read from her long running comic strip, Dykes to Watch Out For which precedes her novels. We will also read the works of Winnicott that Bechdel cites to better understand her appreciation of Winnicott, and how he influences her thinking. The course invites a general question about why an artist cites someone else’s work—it is common phenomenon—but a more particular one about the nature of the relationship Bechdel chooses to have with Winnicott. We will be interested in why Bechdel has such a strong feeling for Winnicott. He becomes nearly a character whose thinking and observations she values—at times he seems a deus ex machina.
Graphic novels have complexities of their own, so the course will begin by reading Scott McCloud’s work on the graphic novel form, and obtain a conceptual frame with which to look into the graphic material.
Students will develop a portfolio that will include: weekly writing and peer responses focused on close readings of scenes in Bechdel; commentary on critical essays on Bechdel’s work; commentary on Winnicott’s essays; two papers (5-7) that will grow out of the weekly work—i.e., students will generate their own topics.
About Professor Gliserman
Martin Gliserman is an English Professor and a practicing Psychoanalyst. He teaches a wide array of courses—Literature and Psychology, Digital Literary Studies, Introduction to the Graphic Novel, Psychoanalytic Theory, Introduction to Literary Studies, and seminars on Virginia Woolf, Ralph Ellison, Chester Himes, and others. His first book was Psychoanalysis, Language, and the Body of the Text; his second book is called Graphic Criticism--it involves data mining one hundred novels written in English between 1719-1997, looking at the semantic code of the novels. The focus of his psychoanalytic interest is on trauma.