Rafi Abrahams stands in front of a screen, pointing to a panel from Alison Bechdel's comic Fun Home.

Photo Credit: Dan Holmes

November 13, 2024

Abigail Arnold | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

On an October afternoon in the Rabb building, first-year Brandeis undergraduates were engrossed in looking at zines. “Professor, this is awesome!” one exclaimed. “This one’s super cute!” said another student, noting the artist’s Instagram handle for future exploration. The students shared their observations of the zines and their thoughts on why their creators might have chosen to publish them outside traditional structures, creating a communal document of notes. One wall of the classroom was covered in comics drawn by the students themselves, some funny, some poignant, all getting their ideas across in just a couple of panels.

This exploration of comics and zines was a meeting of Autobiographical Comics, a University Writing Seminar (UWS) course at Brandeis University. The instructor, Rafi Abrahams, is a fifth-year Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) PhD student in History and recent recipient of a William Cromwell Nelson Foundation Fellowship for his dissertation research. He is currently teaching the course for the third time. GSAS sat down with Abrahams to talk about the course, how he came up with it, and what he loves about teaching.

This interview has been edited for clarity.

What made you interested in teaching UWS? How did you come up with the topic for the course, and what are some of the comics you and your students look at?

I love teaching – I was a preschool teacher and then a sixth grade math teacher before I became a graduate student. I was excited about the possibility of teaching a college course and chose this topic for my UWS course because of my own interest in comics. I’ve always drawn comics in a casual way, but I started taking it more seriously about three years ago. In the process, I learned a lot about the autobiographical genre, and, as a historian, I’m interested in questions of whether comics are “reliable” and how they represent historical versus emotional truths.

The “big three” autobiographical comics in terms of popularity and influence are Art Spiegelman’s Maus, Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, and Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home. We read all three because they are really, really good; because they cover major autobiographical comic themes such as refugee experiences, parent-child relationships, and traumatic childhoods; and because they have had an influence on a lot of other graphic memoirs. I also teach comics that I personally like, such as John Porcellino’s Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man. My class also serves me as a “book club” through which I can assign and discuss new comics I’ve been meaning to read. Last fall, a couple of my students suggested I include Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer in my syllabus, and I am following through this semester. I am excited to read this comic with my community of brilliant students.

What has been your favorite part of teaching the course?

We start off each class session with a short comic-drawing activity, based on that day’s reading, and I really like seeing the comics my students draw. For example, when we read Diary of a Mosquito Abatement Man, I prompted my students: “Draw a two-panel autobiographical comic about an experience that you had with a bug.” I provide an example of a comic that I drew myself. It’s important to me that my students create art as amateurs in a non-judgmental way. Part of the appeal of comics is that they’re very accessible, so I want students to have that practice. It’s fun, and it also lets them get into an artist’s mind.A wall covered in hand-drawn comics.

I also like reading students’ essays and reflections – I’m always surprised by what they come up with and the details they point out that I hadn’t previously considered.

This is your third semester teaching the course. What did you learn from your past experiences that you brought to it this time?

Over time, I’ve noticed common themes across autobiographical comics that you see again and again. It’s been useful for me and my students to have these groupings to think about and to contemplate why comics are an attractive and effective medium for artists to convey these experiences: childhood, war and trauma, and mental illness, for example.

I’ve also developed an interest in how comics are made – most of the comics that exist in the world are not published by publishers but drawn for a small audience, and I want to teach my students about that. That’s what led me to develop today’s lesson on zines. I’ve been really lucky to have great students all three semesters – they’re really interested in the subject matter and take it seriously.

Do you have any fun, unexpected moments from your teaching to share?

Last spring, the class spun off a club, the Comics Drawing Club, that included myself and four of my students. We applied to the Brandeis Festival of the Arts and got the budget to make a zine. The four students and I did all the drawing and creative work, which resulted in an amazing thirty-two page zine made right here at the Brandeis Copy Center! The club continues this year, and we now have ten people who come regularly.

Why do you think that teaching is an important experience for graduate students to have? How does learning from graduate students help undergraduates?

Being a teacher gives you totally different priorities from being a student. I want to show students why I think comics are great and hear their unique perspectives. You don’t necessarily understand the joy and power of a classroom without teaching.

I think having an instructor who is closer to their age and perhaps shares some cultural connections can make a class more approachable for students. Since these students are first-years, I want to share content and teach skills, but I also care about them and want to make sure that they know about our resources on campus.

I prioritize teaching writing skills, but my class is an art theory and literature course as well. I have students who would never sign up for this kind of course otherwise, but they end up there because of the UWS requirements or a casual interest in comics. Amateurism is important to comics and to me – I can reinforce that with this class, and students respond.