A seminar room filled to capacity in the University of Miami Frost Institute for Chemistry and Molecular Science was treated to a pizza lunch on October 10th, 2023 and a visit featuring alumnus Navied Mahdavian, a cartoonist for the New Yorker.
The College of Arts and Sciences and Center for the Humanities co-sponsored the event, where Mahdavian read excerpts from his new graphic novel, entitled “This Country: Searching for Home in (Very) Rural America”, released this September from Princeton Architectural Press.
The graphic novel, a witty blend of life story, Greek mythology, and philosophical musings, focuses on the three years the artist spent living with his wife in a small cabin in pre-pandemic rural Idaho. Both artists, the story chronicles their journey from San Francisco to the remote interior west, in search of a place where they could have the time and space to pursue their creative endeavors.
College of Arts and Sciences students and faculty members had the opportunity to ask the accomplished cartoonist about his career trajectory, from double majoring in classics and philosophy at the University of Miami, to becoming a fifth-grade teacher, to taking up cartooning professionally.
“I just decided one day that I wanted to cartoon,” Mahdavian explained. “I had always doodled; I just needed to find the time to put in the 10,000 hours to master the craft.”
Mahdavian credited his time at the University with helping him generate his work’s philosophical underpinnings, as well as the rich universe of metaphors and references he draws from to tell his fish-out-of-water story. As the Miami native comes to terms with the harsh Idaho winters, learning how to garden for the first time, and being a visibly brown Iranian American in the state’s all-white, pro-Trump political culture, he simultaneously maintains a sense of humor and an artist’s detachment in writing about the experience.
“In cartooning, jokes come from unexpected connections and funny twists,” said Mahdavian.
His humanities background links many of those seemingly unrelated “twists” to his larger themes of nature and life in the twenty-first century.
During a Q&A session, Mahdavian fielded questions from several students with interests in writing and the visual arts about topics including his narrative style and approach to the visual work. In addition to providing advice based on his personal and professional experience, he also elaborated on the process of taking his story from thought to published form, and everything it entailed.
