“Does Doctor Manhattan Think?”: Alan Moore’s The Watchmen and a ‘Great Books’ Curriculum in the Early College Setting

Abstract

Risko’s chapter provides a discussion of his use of, and an argument for the larger incorporation of, Alan Moore’s The Watchmen within the traditionally classics-driven format of the Great Books seminar. The Watchmen is a complex and multifaceted text that allows students to experience competing articulations of thought at a point of confluence between linear-narrative, metatexual narrative, and visual arts. As Risko argues, the form-content relationship found in The Watchmen grants it a particularly impactful position in a Great Books seminar, where its narrative complexity allows it to supplement crucial philosophical texts, like René Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy, while also remaining deserving of attention as a standalone work of literature.