Welcome to the first-ever critical casebook on Marjane Satrapi's graphic memoir, Persepolis. This casebook was crafted by Millikin University students enrolled in Dr. Tony R. Magagna's English 202: Writing About Literature course during the Fall 2010 semester. Since its original publication in French, and its subsequent translation into English, Persepolis has enjoyed a great deal of popular and critical acclaim, and the award-winning 2007 animated film adaptation (also directed by Marjane Satrapi) has only amplified the work's popularity. However, with the exception of a handful of studies, there has yet been relatively little published literary scholarship dedicated to Satrapi's work. Thus, the students whose work is collected here have put together this casebook as an effort both to build the scholarly conversation on Persepolis, as well as to showcase their own original critical contributions to the field of literary scholarship. By exploring this website, we hope that you will learn more about this incredible graphic memoir and the varied perspectives and themes that it confronts.
In addition to the in-depth academic analyses presented here, you will find background information that we feel is useful to understanding and appreciating Satrapi's work. This includes: biographical information on Satrapi herself; a brief history of contemporary Iran; contextual annotations on many of the key ideas and figures mentioned across the breadth of Persepolis; a look at some of the key characters that populate the book; and a collection of links to useful resources elsewhere on the internet, including interviews, reviews, and media clips.
All of the information and scholarship presented in this casebook has been selected and generated by the English 202 students themselves. The website itself was designed and published in collaboration with a team of student web designers from Millikin's Fall 2010 Web Publishing course, led by Dr. Devon Fitzgerald. The web design team included Taylor Cheney, Sarah Wika, Sara Bodzin, Kristin Hansen, Lisa Dotson, Brittney Brown, Christine Radi, Jen Stout, Cheryl Pearson, Kara Heiser, Lauren Mudge, Mike Ammons and Peter Trifomiuk with assistance from Ryan Ho, technical tutor.
Persepolis: A Casebook joins three other casebooks produced by students in Millikin University's English department. Dr. Magagna's Fall 2009 students focused on Junot Díaz's novel The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, while previous classes examined Toni Morrison's Beloved and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake.