The John and Bebe Petrou Foundation, the Department of English, and the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (MITH) are very pleased to announce the 2006 Bebe Koch Petrou Lectures on NEW MEDIA STORYTELLING at the University of Maryland, College Park.

On Tuesday, May 2nd, SCOTT McCLOUD will present “Comics as Storytelling” at 3:30 in Susquehanna Hall 1120. There will also be a more casual colloquium discussion at MITH (McKeldin Library, B0131) earlier in the day at 11:00, which all are welcome to attend. McCloud is perhaps the world’s best known theorist of comics as a visual and narrative art form, widely known and regarded for his two books on the subject, _Understanding Comics_ (1993) and _Reinventing Comics_ (2000)–both of which are themselves written and drawn in comic format. A third book, _Making Comics_, is forthcoming in September. He is the author and illustrator of a number of successful underground strips and series, including _Zot!_ which ran for 36 issues between 1984 and 1991 (”A cross between Peter Pan, Buck Rogers and Marshall McLuhan”). Most recently, McCloud has been on the cutting edge of Web comics, experimenting with digital layout and design effects to create comics that take advantage of the new opportunities for storytelling offered by electronic media. His work has been published in Wired, Nickelodeon, Computer Gaming World, Wizard, and Publishers’ Weekly. He has had speaking engagements at many distinguished universities and institutions, including the MIT Media Lab, Harvard, Microsoft, the Electronic Arts festival, and the Smithsonian. Visit his home page here: http://www.scottmccloud.com/ .