
I am a freelance educator available to teach courses or workshops in English and in Hungarian on the following subjects:
- comics: making comics, histories of comics, comics studies
- environmental humanities and arts
- critical thinking, ethics, art
- visual culture studies
- 20st and 21st century literature
- academic writing
Courses in Spring 2022
I am currently teaching at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest Metropolitan University, and Milestone Institute.

What Are You Looking At? – A course on art and visual culture
Milestone Institute, Budapest
The aim of this course is to complicate our understanding of and relationship to art and works of art. The course helps students to familiarize themselves with theoretical frameworks of art criticism and visual culture studies. Students learn about and try out several approaches of discussing images. Though the course has a focus on Western painting, we will also consider images in other media, and images that are not art. Students read texts and watch videos by leading contemporary art historians and thinkers. Each class is organized around a different question, students are required to collect images and reflect on them for each and every class. Syllabus in English. [Image: The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp by Rembrandt van Rijn]

Humans and Animals
Institute for Theoretical Studies, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest
This course surveys the relationship between humans and nature, humans and non-human animals with the help of contemporary philosophies of the Anthropocene. In focus is how this relationship is represented in art. Each class focuses on a different problem (eg. collections and collecting, maps, landscapes) that we will discuss in class. There will be practical in-class assignments, groupwork, and weekly homework, too. A third of the class is devoted to an award-winning Hungarian novel, Irha és Bőr by Anita Moskát – the author will visit us, too. The aim of the course is to inspire students in the creative work they undertake as students of graphic design, animation, photography, etc – and beyond, in their non-institutionalized artistic practice. Syllabus in Hungarian. [Image: Tyger King, Netflix]

Making Comics, Thinking Comics
Department of Animation, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest
This is a redesigned version of my Thinking, Story, Design course in Autumn 2021. Our focus is on making comics in a playful way, linking drawing and design to a way of thinking, reading comics week by week, building a critical vocabulary that helps students reflect on their own work and analyze other’s comics. By the end of the course, students have experimented with various forms and constraints in their weekly comics making practices, have designed their own comics project on a building of their choice, have given regular constructive feedback to others, have received regular constructive feedback, and have completed their 4-page comic. The course is attended by students of animation, media design, and design theory. Syllabus in Hungarian. [Image by Tom Houghomat.]

The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Art and Ethics after 1960
Institute for Theoretical Studies, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest
We discuss ethical questions raised in the second part of the 20th century and in the 21st century with the help of artistic products in diverse media (film, painting, installation, photography). Our topics include the banality of evil, Milgram’s experiments, Doris Salcedo’s art, public art, environmental ethics, comics journalism, photographing illness, and the work of art in the age of biocybernetic reproduction (following W.J.T. Mitchell). Syllabus in Hungarian. [Image: Cliff Joseph: My Country Right or Wrong]

Comics and Storytelling one-week workshop
Department of Animation, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest
An intensive practical workshop for students of animation. The course is designed to support students in their animation project about “the meaning of life,” which is an overarching theme for the term. We do creative exercises that help students experiment with the specific characteristics of the medium of comics, our focus is on designing time and space of the page. Students also do creative writing exercises to explore the characters they will work with in their “the meaning of life” projects and make experimental comics about them. We also read short comics (excerpts from Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, Majen Kerbaj’s Beirut Won’t Cry, and two zines by Kerbaj, Cloud and Cola.) Syllabus in Hungarian. [Image: comics by the students]

Chapters from the History of Comics – lecture
Department of Visual Communication, Budapest Metropolitan University
Lecture series about the history of comics, topics include production and gender in the 19th century (on the example of recently redeiscovered Marie Duval), the birth of the comic book and WW2, comics and the fear of losing children’s innocence, the graphic novel, comics in Hungary, digital contexts. [Image: The Happy Hooligan by F. B. Opper.]
Get in Touch
eszterszep AT gmail DOT com
Previous Courses in 2021
- Comics: Thinking, Story, Design
Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest
Autumn 2021, link to syllabus - Making Comics
Budapest Metropolitan University
Autumn 2021 - Good and Evil
Milestone Institute, Budapest
Autumn 2021, link to syllabus - Research, Referencing, and Writing
Faculty of Digital Media and Creative Industry, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, Amsterdam
Spring 2021 - Introduction to the History of Comics
Budapest Metropolitan University, Budapest
Spring 2021
Syllabus and students’s works (in English). - Comics as Thinking / Hogyan működik a képregény?
Institute of Theoretical Studies, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest
One-week intensive course, 2021
Link to syllabus (in Hungarian)
Stay tuned, a publication of the best students’ comics is coming soon!
For me, teaching is…
- Dialogue
- Expoloration
- Listening
- Energy
For me, learning is…
- Creativity
- Exploration
- Questions
- New Questions
Previous Courses
- Conflict Through Comics
Milestone Institute, Budapest, 2019
Link to syllabus (in English) - Word and Image Relations
Institute of Theoretical Studies, Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, Budapest
Spring 2018
Link to syllabus (in Hungarian) - Comics Studies: An Introduction
Department of American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Spring 2018
Link to syllabus (in English) - Introduction to Literary Studies
Department of English Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Fall 2014
Fall 2013 - Cultures of Europe
School of English and American Studies, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest
Spring 2014
Fall 2013