Seven Days published a cover story on James Sturm’s career, with a focus on his role cofounding CCS, launching the Applied Cartooning Lab, and his recent adaptation of Watership Down with Joe Sutphin.
From the profile:
In October, the center christened its Applied Cartooning Lab, where students and faculty work with outside organizations on mission-driven, community-based nonfiction comics, such as its collaboration with the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office last year on Freedom and Unity: A Graphic Guide to Civics and Democracy in Vermont and Let’s Talk About It: A Graphic Guide to Mental Health.
Applied cartooning has always been part of the school’s curriculum and mission in one form or another, Sturm said, but the new lab formalizes the program and its myriad projects.
“It’s a place for us to put it all under one banner,” he said.
The lab has tackled some weighty subject matter, from mental health to climate change. Its next book, a collaboration with Harvard University’s Prison Studies Project, is on mass incarceration. If that doesn’t quite sound like a lighthearted jaunt through the Sunday funnies, it’s not. But to Sturm, that’s precisely why nonfiction comics are effective vehicles for breaking down fraught topics.
