Award-winning cartoonist, author, and comics theorist Scott McCloud will present a free public lecture on visual communication on the Rutgers University–Camden campus at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 7.
The talk will be held in the 401 Penn classroom, accessible from the side of the Paul Robeson Library, accessible from Fifth Street between Cooper Street and the Benjamin Franklin Bridge on the Rutgers–Camden campus. Following the lecture, McCloud’s newest graphic novel, The Sculptor, will be available to purchase and for him to sign.
"We're thrilled to have the leading theorist of comics and sequential art visiting our campus,” says Jim Brown, director of the Digital Studies Center at Rutgers–Camden, a co-sponsor of the event. “For more than 20 years, Scott McCloud has provided critics and fans of comics with a critical vocabulary for understanding the medium.”
In a society built around visual communication, McCloud’s work gives media consumers a deeper understanding of storytelling, innovation, and media evolution, adds Robert Emmons, associate director of the Digital Studies Center.
“McCloud ultimately gives us a richer understanding of how we interact with the language of the visual world,” says Emmons.
According to McCloud’s official website, he has been making comics professionally since 1984. Today, he is best known for his non-fiction books, particularly Understanding Comics (1993), a 215-page comic book about the comics medium, translated into more than 16 languages; his inventions, such as “The 24-Hour Comic,” which has now become an international movement; and his fiction comics. He is also a frequent speaker, teacher, and consultant, having appeared at more than 250 destinations, and is an early advocate of Webcomics Debates. For more information on McCloud, visit his website.
Registration is recommended. For more information or to register, visit digitalstudies.camden.rutgers.edu/rsvp-mccloud, or contact Brown at 856-225-6988 or jim.brown@rutgers.edu, or Emmons at 856-225-6815 or raemmons@camden.rutgers.edu.
For directions to Rutgers–Camden, visit camden.rutgers.edu/page/getting-campus.