Cartoonist Bechdel brings lessons from a ‘curious’ career to Yale

In the world of graphic novels and queer comics, there are few more accomplished than Alison Bechdel. Her groundbreaking comic strip “Dykes to Watch Out For” was one of the first representations of lesbians in popular culture — as well as the (tongue-in-cheek) origin of what has become known as “the Bechdel test,” a measure of the representation of women in fiction that has taken on a life of its own. Her grimly comedic graphic memoirs, including “Fun Home,” which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, have endeared her to fans worldwide for her frank observations on her life and family.

Now, as professor in the practice in English and Film and Media Studies in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS), Bechdel will bring her insights as an extraordinary storyteller and artist to the classroom. In her two classes on the craft and production of comics and graphic novels this fall, students will explore “the alchemy of combining words and pictures into the visual language of comics.”

“As a cartoonist, I had to figure all this stuff out just by trial and error, looking at other people's work, and copying what I liked,” said Bechdel, who cites the artist Edward Gorey and the uniquely stylized comic strip “Nancy” among her influences. In her new office at the Humanities Quadrangle, she’s already stocked her shelves with an impressive array of reference material, including an anthology of “Peanuts” comics.

For her students, she added, “I’m hoping to be able to show them, quickly, stuff that took me a long time to do. And then they can just get to work.”

“Alison is a brilliant artist and thinker and what she has done in terms of graphic memoir — and comics in general — is pathbreaking and really quite radical,” said Marc Robinson, dean of humanities in the FAS. “It’s wonderful to have somebody at the forefront of her field as a member of our creative and scholarly faculty, teaching younger artists through the example of her own work.”

Bechdel joins a distinguished tradition at Yale of bringing to campus individuals who have made exceptional contributions in their artistic fields as members of the faculty. In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, many notable artists and practitioners serve as professors in the practice.

This growing cohort includes the acclaimed playwright and author Deb Margolin, who has been a part of the faculty for more than two decades; playwright Donald Margulies; filmmaker and interdisciplinary artist Thomas Allen Harris; essayist and reporter Anne Fadiman; the novelist Michael Cunningham; and the playwright Brandon Jacobs-Jenkins (who recently won a Tony Award).

These acclaimed artists, Robinson said, are fully integrated within their departments — and are viewed as valuable resources for the entire community.

“These are individuals who aren’t just extraordinary artists but extraordinary teachers,” said Robinson, who is also the Malcolm G. Chace ’56 Professor of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies and English. “They are unicorns who have the rare ability to communicate what they do to students and cultivate their students’ own creativity.”

An ‘accidental’ cartoonist

Bechdel is also the fall 2024 Chubb Fellow, one of Yale’s highest honors for a visiting lecturer. In that role she’ll present a public lecture — “‘…and I became a lesbian cartoonist’: Reflections on a Curious Career” —  on campus on Sept. 18.

As the lecture’s title suggests, Bechdel’s journey wasn’t always laid out like a comic strip. “Like all children, I drew, and I just never stopped. I think most people stop when they’re like eight or nine or 10, and I just never did,” Bechdel said. “I wanted to be a cartoonist consciously as a kid, as soon as I learned that that was a job you could have. I wanted to do it, but that got sort of beaten out of me as I went through school. Everyone said, ‘No one gets to be a cartoonist. That’s ridiculous!’ So I gave up on it.”

Then, after college, Bechdel began submitting “crazy, silly drawings” to newspapers, which eventually coalesced into the cult-classic series “Dykes to Watch Out For.” Its success took Bechdel by surprise: “I accidentally became a cartoonist.”

The series ran from 1983 to 2008 in various publications. “They hit a nerve with people,” Bechdel said. “People were eager to see these reflections of women they’d never really seen before.”

In 1999, Bechdel began working on a project that would later become the acclaimed 2006 graphic memoir “Fun Home.” Exploring themes of gender, sexuality, and family, the memoir reflects upon Bechdel’s upbringing in small-town Pennsylvania. Through a tightly woven and non-linear narrative, the story returns to several significant incidents in Bechdel’s youth, including the moment her father died of suicide.

“This painful family episode had occurred while I was still in college,” said Bechdel. “I knew quite early on that that story was something I would love to be able to tell, but I didn’t have the aesthetic distance.” By the time she created “Fun Home,” some 20 years later, she had acquired both the distance and the cartooning skills to create what The New York Times called, “a pioneering work, pushing two genres (comics and memoir) in multiple new directions.” “Fun Home” was later adapted into a musical that opened off-Broadway in 2013 and had its Broadway debut in 2015. The play won five Tony Awards and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

After “Fun Home,” Bechdel published two more graphic memoirs, one in which she charts her relationship with her mother over the years, and another in which she chronicles our current “exercise epoch” and her own fascination with bodybuilding and fitness fads.

“Maybe it’s just the nature of the handwriting, or the fact that you’re touching these pages in the way you would a diary, but there’s also a confessional aspect” to creating a comic, Bechdel said. “Maybe it’s because I was raised Catholic. I like the idea of being able to expiate my sins by writing about it, showing them,” she said, laughing. “But that’s a question that I continue to mull over: What is it that makes them so prone to autobiography? Drawing oneself, too, is a weird psychic activity.” (She added, “I feel like I’ve sort of customized my physical appearance to make it easier to draw.”)

Melding word and image

In her fall classes — “Making Comics” and “The Craft of Graphic Narrative” — Bechdel hopes her students will both explore the formal techniques of drafting and hand-lettering and develop a daily practice for self-expression. She looks forward to letting the classes “unfurl,” she said, and using the semester to “really take our time and nurture things along.”

“She’s an extraordinary teacher,” said Jessica Brantley, the Frederick W. Hilles Professor of English and chair of the English department, who noted that Bechdel visited campus in 2022 to give a guest lecture. That visit was the impetus for approaching her to join the faculty. “It was just clear that she had a rapport with students.”

Bechdel’s appointment, Brantley noted, is part of a broader project in the English department to expand creative writing into new genres and mediums, of which the cartoonist’s pioneering work is an exemplar. “Bechdel is a comics superstar,” said Brantley. “She’s blazing trails in both literary form and social content, making the lives of gay people visible in art through rich combinations of text and image.”

For Bechdel, something “magical” happens when word and image come together. “I love that comics enables you to talk about two or three, even four things at once,” she said, and noted that the fusion happens for the reader, too. “I try not to tie things together too closely. I’m not just illustrating the words, and I want to leave some little space between them for the reader to complete.”

“Alison Bechdel’s work is ground-breaking, and we are immensely fortunate to have her with us at Yale this semester,” said Professor Fatima Naqvi, the Elias W. Leavenworth Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures and of Film and Media Studies and the film and media studies department chair. “Weaving together philosophy, literature, literary criticism, and gender theory, she has expanded the boundaries of the graphic novel.”

Bechdel’s next project is an autofictional “mashup” of her previous memoirs and comic strips. Characters from “Dykes to Watch Out For” return, now older and with kids in college. A cartoonist by the name of Alison Bechdel — who in some ways resembles Bechdel, but in many other ways does not — also makes an appearance.

“It’s been really fun to sort of play with notions of what my real life may or may not be like,” says Bechdel. “In the story I run a pygmy goat sanctuary. But I don’t really do that.” Is that something she’d like to do? “No,” she laughs.

“There’s just this tremendous freedom about just making up something so far-fetched. And that’s been really fun to play with.”

Bechdel’s Chubb Fellow lecture, “‘…and I became a lesbian cartoonist’: Reflections on a Curious Career,” will take place at Sheffield-Sterling-Strathcona Hall, 1 Prospect Street, Room 114 on Wednesday, Sept. 18.  Doors will open at 3:30 for seating.