This invitation to widen our worldview and to embrace different perspective is articulated not only through the drawings that create meanings and show and connect concepts across pages, but also through references to the ideas of different writers and thinkers such as James Joyce, Edward Tufte, Bertrand Russell, René Descartes, Plato, among many others.ĤThe content itself is divided in ten chapters. Since its publication in 2015, it has not gone unnoticed: Unflattening has earned several awards and prizes, among which the 2016 Lynd Ward Prize for Graphic Novel of the Year and the 2016 American Publishers Prose Award for Excellence in Humanities.ģAs a genre–defying piece, Unflattening takes its readers on a 193–page visual and linguistic journey during which Sousanis argues for the necessity to “ a linear perspective” (p. 44) and “seek out new ways of being in directions not only northwards and upwards, but outwards, inwards, and in dimensions not yet within our imagination” (p. 46). Simply said, Unflattening is an ambitious, theoretically grounded, and beautifully designed text. While the book contains a collection of written notes designed to provide more information about the “backstory” and “influences behind the words and drawings” (p. 155- 170), the visual text (p. 1-152) works pretty much as a stand-alone piece. As a matter of fact, it is known today as the first doctoral dissertation entirely written in comics format. Before its publication by Harvard University Press, Unflattening existed as Nick Sousanis’ doctoral dissertation, which he defended at Columbia University. Unflattening is all this and more: it draws from art, science, philosophy, and mythology to offer us a linguistic and visual reflection on knowledge, discourse, and meaning-making processes.ĢWritten entirely in comics form, Sousanis’ book is an invitation to explore the intersections between form and content, hereby expanding our definition of literacy and scholarly inquiry.

Others, like Douglas Wolk in the New York Times, considered Unflattening to be “a genuine oddity, a philosophical treatise in comics form” ( New York Times Book Review, May 2015). 1Scott McCloud, the famous American comic artist and theorist best known for his pivotal work on Understanding Comics (1993), described Unflattening as “a complex, beautiful, delirious meditation”.

Sousanis unflattening