Abstract
Risko’s chapter provides a discussion of his use of, and an argument for the larger incorporation of, Alan Moore’s The Watchmen within the traditionally classics-driven format of the Great Books seminar. The Watchmen is a complex and multifaceted text that allows students to experience competing articulations of thought at a point of confluence between linear-narrative, metatexual narrative, and visual arts. As Risko argues, the form-content relationship found in The Watchmen grants it a particularly impactful position in a Great Books seminar, where its narrative complexity allows it to supplement crucial philosophical texts, like René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, while also remaining deserving of attention as a standalone work of literature.
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Notes
- 1.
See William V. Spanos , America’s Shadow for an analysis of the destructive drive associated with maintaining the United States’ version of capitalism globally via war-making: “It should not be overlooked that this … discourse repeats in thought the violence in practice to which the American officer in Vietnam synecdochically referred when he declared that ‘[w]e had to destroy Ben Tre in order to save it’” (204).
- 2.
For more information about Bard College’s First Year Seminar, see: www.bard.edu/fysem
Works Cited
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Carter, James Bucky. “Teaching Watchmen in the Wake of 9/11.” Teaching the Graphic Novel, edited by Stephen E. Tabachnick. Modern Language Association, 2009, pp. 99–108.
Descartes, René and Donald A Cress. Meditations On First Philosophy. Hackett 1993.
DiGiovanna, James. “Dr. Manhattan, I presume.” Watchmen and Philosophy: A Rorschach Test, edited by Mark D. White, John Wiley & Sons, 2009: pp. 103–114.
Moore, Alan, and Dave Gibbons. Watchmen. Warner Books, 1987.
Prince, Michael J. “Alan Moore’s America: The Liberal Individual and American Identities in Watchmen.” The Journal of Popular Culture, vol. 44, no. 4, 2011, pp. 815–830.
Spanos, William V. America’s Shadow: An Anatomy of Empire. U of Minnesota Press, 2000.
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Risko, G.A. (2018). “Does Doctor Manhattan Think?”: Alan Moore’s The Watchmen and a ‘Great Books’ Curriculum in the Early College Setting. In: Burger, A. (eds) Teaching Graphic Novels in the English Classroom. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63459-3_7
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