It’s a cloudy January afternoon, the first Tuesday of the spring semester. Students edge their way into an overflowing Sever classroom, scooting the desks far within elbowing distance so the perimeter has room to sit. A TF haphazardly tiptoes through the masses to hand out syllabi with the enthusiasm of Oprah on her Favorite Things giveaway. There’s a buzz in the air, the kind that’s made when you fill a space with people united in their excitement for their meeting’s purpose. Then, with another swing of the door, the first class titters and schedule-comparisons fall to a hush.
The Professor has arrived at the first session of the first class on the Graphic Novel in the Harvard English Department–and she’s a woman. Not just any woman, but one with waist-length hair, painted nails, and a Darwin’s to-go cup of coffee in hand. She takes her place at the podium and launches into the first discussion by close reading one of Ernie Bushmiller’s “Nancy” newspaper strips.
A woman commanding the room with a discussion of lines, panels, and the unique logic of a word and image medium shouldn’t be revolutionary. But, as with so many other areas–business, sports, journalism, the list could go on– “women” and “comics” weren’t always institutionally encouraged to go together (unless the female in question is wearing Spandex and assisting a brawny hero on paper).
I wrote down nearly every word of Professor Chute’s first lecture, my notebook a scribbled mess of uncontained enthusiasm that had laid dormant for years. Prior to what would become my favorite course at Harvard, books of the sort we’d be discussing didn’t have a place on my bookshelf. Art Spiegelman and Francoise Mouly weren’t names I recognized. I didn’t know what was so significant about a “gutter”, or how a reader could control the pace of the story.
This wasn’t because I didn’t want to explore this world–but because I felt like I couldn’t. I’d always been a big reader, but where I felt like I could pick up any “traditional” novel, something felt off-limits about comics. I felt a tug of hesitation, a feeling that I was being scathingly watched when I skimmed their section of the library. Why? Because it was a truth universally acknowledged that comics were “weird,” especially for girls. If I’d been caught with anything from Captain America to Maus, I’d be shunned (or, that’s what my adolescent self assumed). The invisible jury dictating how my time could be appropriately spent as a high schooler didn’t have a verdict on whether calling comics “graphic novels” or “comics literature” would make it any better. By the time I got to college, I stopped questioning it and stuck with Jane Austen.
My concern had its justifications. Comics, as I’d come to learn, are largely a male-dominated medium in terms of the characters, their creators, and their most active fanbases. So aside from the general issue of “what will people think when they catch me with Black Hole,” I also felt stalled by the lack of female representation. Where could someone like me, a girly-girl who unironically listens to pop music and wears pink start reading? Where’s the point of entry if you aren’t only interested in superheroes?
Listening to Professor Chute on that first day of class, learning that she was leading the charge for serious comics scholarship, made the medium accessible. In one lecture, this woman empowered me to dip my toes into the comics lexicon without embarrassment–because she was a confident female scholar who chose it as her field. I would learn that, yes, some work in this medium is definitively weird–but so is a large chunk of fiction overall. All fiction has its highlights and its works their authors wish we would forget, its bestsellers and its duds. Comics are no different.
Fast forward to last week, the second semi-real week of class in my senior year. My coworker at Widener Library asks me what I’m writing my English thesis on. “The relationship between sensory perception and memory,” I say between scanning returned books, “mainly focusing on a graphic novel, Building Stories.”
“I haven’t heard of that,” she replies.
“It’s a little hard to explain unless you see it,” I hedge, trying to find a description that will convey how interesting (I think) it is without scaring her away. “It’s not really a book, but a box with a bunch of little books in it, and you can read it in any order. And it’s all about one woman’s life, told in comics form…” I trail off when I see her brow crinkle.
My coworker pauses for a beat before saying, “That’s pretty nerdy, even for a thesis topic.” We laugh–because she’s kind of right–and return to our work.
Thanks to a woman at the front of the room last January, I’ve reconciled the part of me that studies comics with all the others, the part that’s sparkly and maybe a little pop-culture obsessed and the part that will spend the afternoon browsing at Million Year Picnic. It’s a simple shift in mindset, but it changed my outlook on how I’ll spend the rest of my time at Harvard. I decided to proudly like what I like–pursue it, explore it, take it home to meet my parents–and not care if anyone else does.