Internationally renowned cartoonist Paul Karasik joins Graphic Design program

Paul Karasik – a cartoonist for The New Yorker, as well as an internationally recognized and awarded artist, scholar, and educator – has joined Penn State's Graphic Design program as a visiting professor. Karasik is one of the most significant and influential practitioners in the field of literary graphic novels and comics, having contributed as a creator, editor, and instructor. He joins the Stuckeman School as holder of the Stuckeman Professorship in Interdisciplinary Design, and will leverage his extensive practical, creative, theoretical, and pedagogical experience to enrich and expand the graphic design curriculum, engage in creative student mentorship, and foster research and publication in conjunction with the Penn State Libraries. Karasik will give a free public lecture on Wednesday, October 25, titled, Comix 101: Gag Cartooning Fundamentals at The New Yorker. Karsik co-created (with David Mazzuchelli), City of Glass, the graphic novel adaptation of Paul Auster’s book. It was named by The Comics Journal as one of the “Best Comics of the 20th Century” and has been translated in over 20 editions worldwide. With his sister, Karasik created, The Ride Together, a Memoir of Autism in the Family, winner of the Autism Society of America’s “Best Literary Work of the Year” award. He also was the co-editor of Masters of American Comics, the coffee-table companion catalogue to the first major American exhibition of comics co-sponsored by the Hammer and MOCCA Museums, and his anthology celebrating forgotten comics visionary, Fletcher Hanks, received an Eisner Award, the highest honor in the field. How to Read Nancy (fall 2017), co-authored with Mark Newgarden, is an in-depth study of a single Nancy comic strip to reveal the hidden lexicon of comics’ language. Karasik currently teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design and Penn State. He previously has taught and lectured at the Rhode Island School of Design, the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Princeton University, The Center for Cartoon Studies, the Scuola di Comics Internazionale in Italy, The Animation Workshop in Viborg, Denmark, and the EESI school in Angouleme, France.