When Rice University’s Julie Fette was brainstorming for fall 2024 courses in the Department of Modern and Classical Literatures and Cultures, one of the ideas she landed on was French Comics (FREN 322).
“I can teach comics. I can contextualize comics in French history. I can examine with students particular comic books that have to do with French society and politics,” said Fette, associate professor of French studies. “But as a historian and sociologist, I cannot teach them how to draw comics.”
Knowing that was an element she’d like to incorporate into the course, Fette applied to the university’s Arts Initiatives Fund (AIF) for support. AIF is dedicated to fostering collaboration and creativity across disciplines at Rice through competitive grants ranging from $1,000 to $20,000 that encourage faculty to implement projects that enhance the arts and reach a broad range of students.
“I’ve seen the call for grant applications come through year after year, but this was the first time I had a eureka moment, ‘Oh, I have a plan really well suited to this grant,’” Fette said.
The grant provided a key component of the course: the arrival of Cheyenne Olivier, a French illustrator and doctoral candidate at the University of Tours. Olivier’s presence in the classroom marked a shift from traditional French studies.
“Professor Fette was interested in comics to talk about French culture, and she wanted the students to experience what it takes to do comics by themselves,” Olivier said.
The workshop offered students exercises in portraiture, landscape drawing and storytelling, pushing them beyond the typical humanities-in-a-foreign-language learning experience.
“You don’t need to know how to draw to do a comic, and that’s the beauty of it,” Olivier said, explaining the importance of narrative over artistic skill. “I was mostly interested in what the students had to say about the campus, about the environment they were studying but also living in.”
The course’s major assignment required students to create an eight-panel comic strip depicting a real-life story they observed on campus. It was inspired by the work of Riad Sattouf, a prominent French comic writer, who created a series called “The Secret Life of Young People” for French satire newspaper Charlie Hebdo.
“Sattouf would use his daily commute to do precisely what I was asking Rice students to do: find stories that would connect to some social aspect with universal import,” Olivier said.
“The Secret Life of Rice,” made up of the nine student comic strip panels as well as Olivier’s, will be exhibited at the Moody Center for the Arts beginning Nov. 14 with an opening reception at 4 p.m.
The AIF grant allowed Fette to secure Olivier’s visit, fund art supplies and organize the exhibition of students’ work at the Moody. The support also made it possible for students to delve into an unfamiliar creative process and reflect on their surroundings.
“It helps them approach French studies from a different angle,” Fette said.