An advancement in comics education at Malmö university
Malmö University will add a new comics course on advanced level, beginning in January 2026. We have asked Course responsible, Associate Professor/Senior Lecturer Jakob Dittmar, to answer some questions regarding this new and unique course.
Question:
Malmö University currently offers four free-standing comic-courses*, so how does this new one, The Graphic Novel as Visual Literature, differ from the others?
Answer:
The course on The Graphic Novel is the first comics-course at Malmö University that is dedicated to analysis and theory and does not include a larger production of a comic. We will do exercises with comics production to understand different aspects in comics narration better, the main work is reading and interpreting selected graphic novels as literature. The course only looks at fictional stories, graphic novels in the true sense of the word!
The course Documentary Comics will run in parallel to this course and is restricted to factual narrations, and there, a major production is central to the learning outcomes. Graphic novels often take many years until they are published, this cannot be done on a university course, but it can be supported by the course.
Question :
How does this new course help to advance the field of comics-studies?
Answer:
The Graphic Novel course applies and advances the toolbox we have for analysing comics – it combines theories and methods from literary studies and comics studies, we will work with issues established in visual communication, graphic design, and media studies as well as literary studies to really look into the details of graphic novels.
The focus is on understanding better how individual comics use pictorial and textual elements to tell their story in just their individual voice and style.
Question:
Who would you recommend applying to this course?
Answer:
People, who want to understand better what it is that makes a graphic novel work really – how graphic style, composition of images and pages, and the texts, all work together to create visual literature that is as substantial as text-only novels.
People who want to do their own graphic novels in the future will benefit from this course as much as people who want to do literary studies on visual literature!
The course is aimed at students that know how academic courses work, how analysis and theory work, it is on advanced level.
The course is for students who can benefit from and contribute to an online course. Experience with reading longer comics is expected, experience with comics production are not needed but are no disadvantage.
Apply here:
The Graphic Novel as Visual Literature
https://mau.se/en/study-education/courses/kk180a/
*Our other comics-courses are:
Digital Comics: https://mau.se/en/study-education/courses/kk146a/
Documentary Comics: https://mau.se/en/study-education/courses/kk170a/
Religion and Comics – A Critical Introduction: https://mau.se/en/study-education/courses/is221f/
Serieteckning och visuellt berättande: https://mau.se/sok-utbildning/kurser/kk239a/