The study of East Asia makes sense not necessarily as a study of shared canons or of ‘civilizational origins’ or, shared ‘Asian values’: rather, modern East Asia can be productively studied in terms of shared historical, political, cultural concerns; the influx of new ideologies; the processes of ‘becoming modern’; and of course, the positioning of East Asian area studies in the academy and the larger world. In this introductory course, we will be looking at “Global East Asia” and its diasporas through all manners of storytelling, focusing on word-image narratives: Asian traditions of manga, manhwa, manhua, as well as graphic novels.