2-YEAR PG Arts Program
Note: Applicants should apply to the MA courses if they intend to take up PGDP Finish. There is no separate application form for PGDP Finish; one can exit at the end of year 1 of MA with an award of a PG Diploma upon successfully completing the graduation requirements.
The first of its kind in India, the MA Comics & Graphic Literature (CGL) program is oriented to the AVGC sector, which is Animation, Visual Effects, Gaming and Comics. Comics content can work across platforms and are often the material on which animation and gaming sectors are built. The program explores the medium of comics and graphic literature in their broadest sense. Given its nature as a transmedium, with its links to the most basic forms of mark-making as well as to technological forms like the cinema, students will engage in focused enquiry and understanding, with and through comics and other graphic literature forms. Through drawing, reading, writing, seminars, transdisciplinary research, and engaging in critical inquiry of the medium, they will produce knowledge in the medium and develop their aesthetic practices in relation to contemporary contexts. Literary studies, cultural studies and comics studies will inform practice, while making leads into critical inquiry. Building on a foundation of basic drawing and narrative skills, the program will equip critically informed practitioners in bringing new perspectives and ways of thinking about our contemporary society and culture via the medium of comics and graphic literature. It creates a space for extending and developing pictorial narrative forms in South Asia. Graduates of the program will contribute to enabling a richer and more inclusive discourse, both locally and globally. They can work across the AVGC sectors and can also further their research practice by continuing to do a PhD.
Course Leader: Bharath Murthy
Faculty Team: Vasvi Oza, Abhishek Hazra, Priyankar Gupta
The medium of comics stands at the intersection of literature, visual art, and cinema. The Master of Arts in Comics & Graphic Literature has been designed keeping in mind the transdisciplinary nature of comics and the larger field of graphic literature as a form of creative expression. Comics and graphic literature have their own histories. Engaging with these histories of the medium, the program envisions the creating of critically informed practitioners who can contribute to the continued evolution of the medium, particularly in South Asian contexts.
LEVEL
Postgraduate Degree
AWARD
Masters of Arts (MA)
DURATION
2 Years / Full-time
ROUND 1 – LAST DATE TO APPLY
31 March 2025
Graduates of the MA Comics & Graphic Literature course will be equipped to work in the following areas:
Comics are a medium to express ideas using words and pictures in sequence. Another definition would be a narrative in which words and images have ‘equal rights’. The French call it Bande Dessinée, the Italians call it Fumetti, the Japanese call it Manga. Together, they are a global art form with their own histories and practices. Comics today are continuing to evolve in the digital arena as well. It creates a popular space of its own, outside the mainstream mode of cultures of exhibition, museumization, archival institutionalization. They cater to the common and the specialist, like the Third Culture.
Graphic literature encompasses historical visual narrative traditions as well as contemporary graphic novels and innovative picture books. It refers to the larger field of pictorial storytelling and graphic narratives. It places written and visual representations on equal grounds/platform, differentiating it from ordinary illustrations or textual critique of visuals, wherein hierarchy exists. Often the language of writing collaborates with visual language, thus bringing in elements of calligraphy. Graphic literature also finds a space unique from the text-heavy novels, short stories and other pure verbal narratives. Graphic literature refutes the traditional bifurcation between visuals and words and is the core essence of and contributes to the non-Whitecube mode of display culture of narratives.
This program is suitable for anyone with the curiosity to engage with the medium. The core requirement is demonstrable competency in drawing and creative writing. Some familiarity with comics and graphic novels is preferred. Arts and humanities graduates can apply provided they meet the above requirements. For graduates in art and design, the program is a way into advanced studies in the medium.
Prospective students should be able to show evidence of mid-level competence in drawing and creative writing. The student portfolio should include a sketchbook (hand-drawn sketches on paper) and at least one piece of creative writing. The sketchbook should include observational drawing – people, spaces, objects. Creative writing could be either fiction or non—fiction, max 2000 words. It can be an excerpt of a longer piece.
MA in Comics & Graphic Literature is designed keeping in view the growth of the medium in India and South Asia. It explores the medium in its specificities and encourages students to develop their voices in the process. It emphasizes the study of the medium in South Asian and Global South contexts. As a transmedium, comics and graphic literature stand at the intersection of both visual art and cinema. The course benefits from the larger ecosystem of MA Contemporary Art Practice and MA Filmmaking, also offered at SMI.
Srishti Manipal does not provide an official/formal placement event for its graduating batches. Instead the graduation seminar known popularly as “The Srishti Collective” becomes a platform where industry is invited to attend and view our graduating batch’s capstone seminar and conference. Historically this also becomes a placement event. Additionally we publish a catalogue of our graduates each year which is circulated amongst industry and professionals.
