Sun May 11, 2008 — by Van Jensen

Stanford Class Creates Graphic Novel

'Shake Girl' explores history of Cambodian acid attacks

In what is being billed as the first full graphic novel to be created as a classroom project, a group of Stanford students this past year completed Shake Girl, a fictional story about a Cambodian woman who is attacked with acid as revenge on an affair.

The 224-page book came from a writing class taught by Tom Kealey, and signalled a new step in the advancement of graphic fiction into traditional college campuses. The San Francisco Chronicle has a nice long story on it.

"In a normal writing class, you'd write a poem or finish a chapter and you'd own it," Kealey said. "In this class, we had to collaborate every step of the way, every idea, and make compromises. It was the most difficult and rewarding class I ever taught."

While the study of comics and graphic novels has steadily become an acceptable part of college curricula - "Maus" creator Art Spiegelman taught a course at Columbia University last year - the project-based graphic novel class offered at Stanford appears to be the first of its kind.

In case you're interested in the project, Stanford has made Shake Girl available online, so click right here and grade it for yourself.

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