Unflattening

Unflattening began as the first comic-form dissertation at Columbia University, where Nick Sousanis completed a doctorate in education in 2014. It was published by Harvard University Press in 2015 and functions as an argument for visual thinking in teaching and learning. In 2016 the book received the further accolade of the American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence.

In a Paris Review interview with Timothy Hodler, Sousanis cited Scott McCloud’s 1993 Understanding Comics as a crucial influence. Sousanis says that McCloud’s text “showed that comics can be lots of things, including educational” (Sousanis, Nick. “Thinking Through Images: An Interview with Nick Sousanis.” Interview by Timothy Hodler. The Paris Review, 20 July 2015. Accessed 11 Oct. 2021). In the same interview, Sousanis states that “[T]he comics I make are a lot smarter than I am, because I can make connections through them that I wouldn’t make in my writing,” indicating that the visual medium affords a richness that text does not. For Sousanis, the visual better documents “the nonlinear, tangential ways our thinking moves,” which the linear, sequential pattern of language can struggle to capture.

The Los Angeles Review of Books offers a mixed reception of Sousanis’s work.