AAS 11
Visual Literature: An Exploration of Image and Text Winter 2025

In this series we’ll look at ways writers incorporate image and text, and play with generative prompts to inspire writing and visual art creation alike. We’ll study graphic literature and creative works, primarily by AAPI writers, that approach the blending of image and text through different lenses-from the graphic poems of Naoko Fujimoto to the graphic memoirs of Mira Jacob, from the mixed media collages of Victoria Chang to the multimedia approach of Don Mee Choi’s DMZ Colony. Assignments will include weekly readings, analysis, and discussion, daily free writes/drawings, and guided in-class prompt-based exercises. We will engage with experimental prompts including writing with our non-dominant hand, creating collages, and drawing personal archives to insert into prose. Students will regularly share works-in-progress, and the Winter Study will culminate in an end-of-course showcase and celebration. Students will walk away with a strong introductory understanding blending creative writing with visual work, new access points for an ever-evolving writing practice, and a framework from which to build future projects.