Implications of Representing Identity in Comics

Home , Beth Chapel, Comics in education, Lady Cop, Shadow Cabinet (comics), Skein (comics)

The Pennsylvania State University

The Graduate School

EXCEPTIONAL SISTAHOOD: IMPLICATIONS OF REPRESENTING IDENTITY IN

COMICS FOR COLLABORATIVE ART EDUCATION PRACTICES AMONG WOMEN

STUDENTS AND TEACHERS OF COLOR WITH DISABILITIES

A Dissertation in

Art Education and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Veronica Hicks

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements

for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

August 2019

The dissertation of Veronica Hicks was reviewed and approved* by the following:

Booker Stephen Carpenter, II Professor of Art Education & African American Studies Interim Director, Penn State School of Visual Arts Dissertation Co-Adviser Co-Chair of Committee

Ariane Cruz Associate Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Dissertation Co-Adviser Co-Chair of Committee

Joel Priddy Associate Professor of Graphic Design

Mary Ann Stankiewicz Professor Emeritus of Art Education

Kimberly Powell

Art Education Graduate Program Officer

Associate Professor of Art Education

*Signatures are on file in the Graduate School.

ABSTRACT

Mainstream comic books featuring disabled women of color characters reinforce stereotyped depictions of minority group identities. In a radical approach to the disability narratives in art education research and counter-storytelling by women of color, this study reads, produces, and shares comics from the perspective of a feminist art education researcher. This study highlights and critiques mainstream comics and the educational systems that maintain group oppression over disabled women of color by considering the creation of comics as an inquiry-based and arts-based education research method. I argue that comic book creators affect reader’s beliefs about disabled women of color by subverting or supporting their accurate representation. Comics created and shared by disabled women of color who are art students and teachers reveal personal and community narratives as a reaction to and reflection of their society.

I review how comics created by White, able-bodied men overwhelmingly determine overwhelmingly the presentation of disabled women of color characters. Ultimately, the oppression of minority populations in education and in comics is maintained through the control of representation, which is accomplished through miseducation and misinformation reinforced in the form of laws, imagery, and societal norms. Thus, constructions of race, gender, and ability in comics should be critically examined and changed to counter the racist, sexist, and ableist sociocultural contexts and society producing those images. The study results reveal ways in which an art teacher and her former student employed collaborative art making practices to express their experiences through sequential art in the form of a comic book entitled, Woven. The act of sharing Woven, among a community of disabled female art students and teachers of color, communicated situational oppressions and forged unity around common themes of identity, art making, and community. The same community of disabled women art students and teachers of iii

color participated in a survey about Woven. The survey results demonstrated disabled women of color—specifically art students and teachers in this study—identified overwhelmingly with the themes of art making, identity, and community. The creation and sharing of Woven with art teachers and students added to the representation of disabled women art students and teachers of color in comics publishing, and as a result, provided an accurate representation of this minority population’s experiences in art education.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Figures ...... ix

List of Tables ...... xi

Prologue ...... xii

Chapter 1. MISTY KNIGHT AS EXCEPTIONAL AND DIFFERENTLY ABLED WOMEN OF

COLOR IN COMIC BOOKS: SITUATING THE STUDY...... 1

An Art Class Dilemma ...... 7

Research Rationale...... 8

Research Questions ...... 25

Scope: Assumptions and Limitations...... 26

Organization of the Study ...... 26

Chapter 2. INVESTIGATING SILENCED AND CONCEALED NARRATIVES ...... 29

Intersectionality as Feminist Lens ...... 30

Black and Brown Ink: A Justification for Critical Race Theory ...... 35

Tints and Shades: Black Disability Studies and Dis/ability Critical Race Theory ...... 41

Introduction of ES Characters in Comics ...... 46

Visualizing Exceptional Sista Artists...... 47

Image-Conscious: Discussing Representation in Comics...... 49

Re-Presenting Exceptional Sistas in Comics ...... 63

Summary ...... 66 v

Chapter 3. A COMICS METHODOLOGY TO FRAME STUDENT-TEACHER ART

PRACTICES ...... 67

Thought Bubbles: Inspiration for a Comics Methodology ...... 67

Comics Methodology: Sequencing Student-Teacher Narratives ...... 69

Elements of Comics Methodology...... 74

Arts-Based Research ...... 74

Narrative Inquiry ...... 76

Comics Methodology ...... 78

Using a Comics Method...... 79

Case Study Interview Data and Procedure...... 82

Visual/Audio and Written Document Collection ...... 87

Comics Design and Development ...... 87

Survey Data and Procedure ...... 87

Research Participants ...... 89

Mixed-Methods Benefits and Issues ...... 91

Limitations of the Data ...... 92

Summary ...... 93

Chapter 4. REVEALING THEMES: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS ...... 95

Comics Method Case Study ...... 96

Comics Method Process ...... 97

Comics Method Results ...... 106

Theme of Identity ...... 107

Theme of Art Making ...... 111

Theme of Community ...... 113

Comics Method Discussion ...... 114

Comics Method Conclusion ...... 118

Survey Method ...... 119

Survey Method Process...... 120

Survey Method Results ...... 123

Survey Method Discussion ...... 129

Survey Method Conclusions ...... 132

Attitudes of Participants ...... 132

Research Limitations ...... 133

Problems with the Study Design, Data Collection, and Analysis ...... 134

Summary ...... 136

Chapter 5. CROSSOVERS IN A MULTIVERSE: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPACT ON THE

FIELD ...... 137

Research Question 1 ...... 139

vii

Research Question 2 ...... 140

Findings and Conclusions ...... 146

Finding 1 ...... 147

Finding 2 ...... 149

Conclusion ...... 150

Relevance to Art Education ...... 151

Relevance to Women’s Studies ...... 153

Implications of Comics Methodology in Practice ...... 154

Comics Methodology Researching ES Identity ...... 155

Comics Methodology Using Narrative Inquiry ...... 155

Comics Methodology Using Arts-Based Research...... 156

Recommendations for Future Research ...... 156

Comics Publishing Comparison ...... 157

Comics Methodology ...... 158

ES Anthology ...... 158

References ...... 161

Appendix: Figures ...... 183

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Prosthetics in Sports, second in a series of three illustrations, Ashanti Fortson,

2018...... 22

Figure 2. Untitled comic strip, Bianca Xunise, 2018...... 24

Figure 3. Misty Knight, Marvel Premiere #21, Marvel Comics, 1975 ...... 51

Figure 4. The Case of the Disabled Justice League, Issue 36, 1965 ...... 53

Figure 5. Four panels from The New Teen Titans Issue 1, DC Comics, 1982...... 55

Figure 6. Cyborgirl, DC Comics, 2002...... 56

Figure 7. Doctor Midnight, Infinity, Inc., DC Comics, 1985...... 60

Figure 8. Silhouette, New Warriors #2, Marvel Comics, 1990...... 62

Figure 9. Two pages from the graphic novel Gringa! by Kat Fajardo, 2015...... 64

Figure 10. Excerpt, My Favorite Thing is Monsters!, Emil Ferris, 2017 ...... 65

Figure 11. Excerpt from Souvenir by Eldrax, Indigo Esmonde, 2018...... 81

Figure 12. Comics method process for the case study and survey...... 84

Figure 13. A screenshot of the narrative script edits from the co-authors and illustrator...... 99

Figure 14. Ms. Perkins and Tiffany character design...... 101

Figure 15. Creating a panel that shows Tiffany adjusting her prosthetic arm...... 103

Figure 16 Classroom environmental design...... 104

Figure 17. Hypervisibility and invisibility, Woven, 2018...... 109

Figure 18. Ms. Perkins passing the skein of yarn, Woven, 2018...... 110

Figure 19. Finding your crew, Woven, 2018...... 111

Figure 20. Front cover art, Woven, 2018...... 183

Figure 21. Page 1, Woven, 2018...... 184 ix

Figure 22. Page 2, Woven, 2018...... 185

Figure 23. Page 3, Woven, 2018...... 186

Figure 24. Page 4, Woven, 2018...... 187

Figure 25. Page 5, Woven, 2018...... 189

Figure 26. Page 6, Woven, 2018...... 190

Figure 27. Page 7, Woven, 2018...... 191

Figure 28. Page 8, Woven, 2018...... 192

Figure 29. Page 9, Woven, 2018...... 193

Figure 30. Page 10, Woven, 2018...... 194

Figure 31. Page 11, Woven, 2018...... 195

Figure 32. Page 12, Woven, 2018...... 197

Figure 33. Page 13, Woven, 2018...... 199

Figure 34. Page 14, Woven, 2018...... 200

Figure 35. Back cover art, Woven, 2018...... 202

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1. Research Procedures Organized by Data Source ...... 86

Table 2. Survey Statements or Questions, Mean Ratings, and Standard Deviations ...... 122

Table 3. Response Rates to Belief and Motivation Statements ...... 125

Table 4. Response Rates to Statement on the Effect of Comic Book and Art Making ...... 127

Table 5. Response Rates to Statement on the Effect of Comic Book and ES Community ...... 128

PROLOGUE

I used the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association 6th edition

(APA) to format cited sources within the social sciences. However, the image formatting in this dissertation does not fully follow the guidelines according to the APA 6th edition style guide manual. This is due to limitations in regard to accommodating people with certain disabilities.

The image captions in this dissertation accommodate the needs of individuals who use screen- reading technology. I have made this choice to address the ableist-favoring of sighted readers within the style guide.

xii

CHAPTER I: MISTY KNIGHT AS EXCEPTIONAL AND DIFFERENTLY ABLED

WOMEN OF COLOR IN COMIC BOOKS: SITUATING THE STUDY

“This is 1975, bright-eyes—anything’s possible.”

Misty Knight, Iron Fist, Volume 1, Issue 3

Mercedes “Misty” Knight marks the first appearance of a Black woman with a disability in U.S. comics when she appeared on the pages of Marvel Team-Up, Volume 1, Issue 1 (1972).

Co-creators Tony Isabella and John Byrne feature Misty Knight as a nameless New York City robbery victim whose Christmas presents were stolen. But Spiderman, who rescued her, quickly intercepted and returned them. Spiderman called the brown-skinned woman “boss,” “nice lady,” and “gorgeous,” but not by her own name until 1975, when she resurfaced as Misty Knight, a detective tracking an evil cult in Iron Fist, Volume 1, Issue 2. Believing that she had found the cult member responsible for hurting her friend, Misty mistakenly identified hero martial artist,

Iron Fist, and attacked him as her enemy. Misty Knight’s strength and formidable combat skills surprised the martial arts expert and superhero who ultimately defeated her in combat. Misty received severe wounds in Iron Fist, Volume 1, Issue 3 (1976), which introduced the circumstances of receiving a cybernetic prosthesis. Her synthetic skin ripped, revealing sophisticated bionic elements comprising the interior of Misty’s right arm and hand.

Comics featuring Misty Knight were created in the United States, where societal systems promote White, typically abled men, who I define as Caucasian men who do not identify as disabled, maintain authority over images that represent minority populations, such as women, people of color, and people with disabilities. Including Misty in multiple top-selling comics may

seem to empower women of color with disabilities through her existence alone. Yet, the presence of one disabled female character of color does not inherently make comics anti-sexist, anti-racist, or anti-ableist. An analysis of gender portrayal in major comic book publishers, such as DC

Comics and Marvel, reveals that women characters account for only 30.9% of the DC universe and 30.6% of the Marvel universe (Hickey, 2014). Feminist art education and comics researcher,

Courtney Lee Weida (2011), described the educative potentiality of comics within a feminist framework. Weida observed the capacity of comics to depict women of color characters who cross gendered racialized boundaries, addressing “sexism and racism of the canon through comic book formats of narrative” (Weida, 2011, p. 104). In making this comment, Weida urges feminist art educators to critically examine the narratives in comics that may promote discrimination based on a comic character’s sex or gender. Consider that co-creators, Tony Isabella and John

Byrne (White, typically abled men), authored the decisions for Misty Knight’s personality, storyline, and appearance in comics. Readers of comics featuring Misty can infer understandings from her thoughts, interactions, and reactions to her multiple minority status as a Black woman wearing a prosthetic. By depicting a woman of color wearing a prosthetic, creators, Isabella and

Byrne, provided readers with an opportunity to gain insight into experiences in relation to their own lives. Misty Knight’s presence generated a higher degree of diversity in mainstream comic books through sharing the narrative of a woman of color with a disability. Diverse representation in comics, however, must deliberate the lack of women of color with disabilities creating comic book characters with similar identities.

When discussing diversity in the identity of mainstream comic creators, most comics scholars will agree that authorship is dominated by White, typically abled men. Where this agreement ends, however, is on the question of whether White, typically abled, men comic 2

creators accurately represent people of color, women, and disabled comic characters. Whereas some are convinced that White, typically abled men accurately narrate minority group populations’ lived experiences in comics, others maintain that a majority population creating minority group characters subvert accurate representation of the minority group. Authoring and sharing comics featuring disabled women of color deserves a critical analysis to understand how comics affect readers’ beliefs. Investigating accurate identity representation in comics is achieved through studying sociocultural theoretical standpoints aligned with intersecting gendered, racial, and disability standpoints. Sociologist and cultural theorist Stuart Hall (1990) stated that studying the representation of identity should involve theory examining minority group oppression. Agreeing with Hall’s argument, I use a lens of intersectional feminism

(Crenshaw, 1989) to examine the identity of minority groups and describe the relationships between oppression and identity for women of color with disabilities. The identities and abilities examined in this study require an intersectional lens to theorize how sexism, racism, and ableism in U.S. society uniquely interact to produce disparities for women of color with disabilities. An examination of ways that people with intersectional identities in comics and in education systems reveals that visual narratives support or diffuse systemic oppression of minority group populations.

So far, I have discussed some examples of comics representing women of color with disabilities, but the larger issue with presenting inaccurate minority groups in visual media stems from the treatment of minorities in U.S. society. One such aspect of society that reflects the political imbalance that disfavors minority citizens is the U.S. education system. Assessing ways that the U.S. education system holds authority over women of color with disabilities helps to understand how political power reinforces majority group values over minority groups. This 3

study reviews law, policy, and research on the education sector of U.S. government to consider how power operates for disabled women of color students and teachers.

This study aims to determine whether the beliefs of women of color with disabilities, or exceptional sistas (ESs), are influenced by a comic book about ES art students’ and teachers’ experiences. I argue that comic books act as cultural objects using different methods of characterization, such as appearance, speech, relationships, actions, and thoughts, to influence reader beliefs about a minority group, specifically ESs. This is significant because a comic book featuring ES characters may potentially affect readers’ beliefs about this population. Black disability scholar Ayesha Vernon (1996) researched ES identity and experiences, noting how an

ES narrative can be correlated to the ES community’s narrative. According to Vernon (1999), people within the ES community face multiple differences among one another but share one critical similarity—the stigma of impairment, which complicates other oppressions. ESs face oppression from a combination of ableism, racism, and sexism in U.S. society. In other words, oppression intersects ESs by creating a stigma of being impaired, a person of color, and a woman. This intersecting oppression shapes a person’s daily experiences in complex ways that I investigate by way of this study’s comic book.

I theorize that the oppression that ESs face can be countered by disrupting the majority populations’ control over ES identity representation with accurate depiction of ESs in comics and in education. This study examines the social constructions of race, gender, and ability as they intersect with ESs in comics and in education. Considering ESs from one standpoint, be it gender, race, or disability, would inevitably miss the larger picture concerning the nature of oppression (Petersen, 2006). Intersectionality (Crenshaw, 1989), Dis/ability Critical Race Theory

(Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2015), and Critical Race Theory (CRT) (Delgado, 1989) reflect 4

some of the perspectives and politics around race, gender, and ability, as experienced by women of color with disabilities. This study references these theories to respond to the representation of women of color with disabilities within comics and in art education classrooms.

According to art education scholar Joni Acuff (2018), minority discourses rarely inhabit the intellectual space of dominant theory, including art education. Countering this oppression,

Black feminists have used, and are more frequently using, Black popular culture references within their research and scholarship (Acuff, 2018). Acuff advocated for a critique of art education by using Black feminism to understand perspectives of women of color instead of assuming their experiences are universal to all students and teachers. Acuff outlined that some art education students have continued to question why diversity discussions should take place in art education discourse (Acuff, 2013). She pointed to art educator Wanda Knight (2006), who asserted through her teaching experiences that contemporary art can be used to challenge cultural values, beliefs, and assumptions. I argue that comics, a contemporary art medium, featuring ES art students and teachers can affect readers’ beliefs because art classroom experiences cannot be generalized. This outcome is seen in this study, which demonstrates that an ES art student’s and teacher’s narrative of experiences were not universal, even among a group of ES art students and teachers. My studying ES art students and teachers making comics is critical to the production and representation of minority populations in U.S. art education from an intersectional feminist standpoint. Such a critique resists the demands of the dominant culture, which feminist, bell hooks (2000), stated demands a willingness to identify accurately the various systems working together to promote exploitation and oppression.

Mainstream comics, for example, feature disabled women of color characters but rarely employ disabled women of color as authors or illustrators. Mainstream comics have historically 5

employed minority populations to narrate minority identities in a way similar to that found in art education scholarship. Through an examination of the ways in which minority identities are represented in comics and art education, this study explores ways in which ES identity is subverted or supported through comics publishing and educational institutions’ policy, actions, and images.

Creating comics affects how ESs communicate their narratives, in part because comics can support closure, which comic artist Scott McCloud (1993) defined as the observation of multiple images to perceive a comic book’s message in and through images as a whole. Closure relies on readers to denote differences in a panel, such as timing and action. The author creates gaps within the time and movement of an image so that the reader completes the story by bridging the gaps and gaining a sense of resolution and understanding. In the comic book created as part of this study, closure is employed to indicate ideas and beliefs from a personal ES narrative of one art student and teacher to an ES community group.

In terms of ESs’ understandings, making, reading, and sharing comics provide a site for the student and teacher in this study to visualize aspects of ES identity with members of their community. Comics dramatize specific issues, bringing them to the forefront for debate within a community (Packalen & Sharma, 2007). They also magnify and distinguish ways in which a community views topics important to that particular community. Although ES representation in comics may seem of concern to only a small group of art students and teachers, it should in fact concern those who care about disparities in education systems for minority groups as well as those concerned with aspects of U.S. culture and media. I demonstrate to art educators’ and women’s studies scholars a close inspection of comics providing readers insight into a

character’s narrative that can subvert or support accurate representation through qualities particular to the medium.

However, this narrative can be controversial, subverting or supporting accurate representation of ESs. My focus on sharing personal narratives among ES art students and teachers engages in personal and community narratives as a reaction to, and reflection of, society. Critical race theorist Delgado (1989) stated that sharing a personal narrative within a minority group subverts the reality of a dominant narrative. This dissertation brings to light a rarely-focused-on art education narrative about ES identity. Telling this narrative involves my role as researcher and comics creator, along with sharing creative authority with other creators.

This comic book is a constructed space where understandings about individual experiences were shared among a group of ES community members. Delgado would agree with the storytelling method in this study since the ES group members making and sharing the comic book generate “the cohesiveness that stories bring [as] part of the strength of the outgroup. An outgroup creates its own stories, which circulate within the group as a kind of counter-reality”

(1989, p. 2412). My own view is that communicating the story of an ES art student and teacher counteracts an accurate representations of this population. With this art-based narrative approach to research, this study centers a personal story as well as my theorizing about multiple minority group identities in art education. To research this one story, I explain in the following section an encounter with Tiffany and our approach to teaching and learning.

An Art Class Dilemma

One essential story has come to represent my gendered, racial, and ableist experiences as an art teacher during a semester spent teaching art in a public high school. Although I appreciated teaching the art students in my classes, I was facing a problem: How would I, a 7

woman art teacher of color with Auditory Processing Disorder (APD), instruct one student,

Tiffany, a woman of color who wore a prosthetic arm, in our upcoming scarf-weaving art activity? Tiffany explained that she could hold the loom with her one hand and ask a neighboring student to cut the yarn when she wanted to switch colors, and also that she could tie a knot in the yarn herself. Further conversations with Tiffany, who is now an early childhood educator, included discussions of our different struggles and joys in teaching and the similar ways in which we feel being disabled women educators of color affects our lives.

Using a comics method, incorporating dialogue, and employing visual counter- storytelling, Tiffany and I reviewed our relationship to art education as individuals (as a teacher and a student) and together (as ES community members). This inquiry developed into a collaborative comic book creation for which Tiffany and I shared and reflected upon experiences of teaching and learning in art education. I sought to understand the effects of co-creating a comic book with a former student with whom I share an intersectional marginalized identity. I also conducted this investigation in this dissertation by studying the effects of past ES art students and teachers reading the comic book, who also share that same intersectional identity.

These past ES art students and teachers recorded their responses to the comic book with an online survey. By surveying ES art students’ and teachers’ reception to the comic book, this study employs a reflective and critical pedagogical praxis for women’s studies and art education scholarship.

Research Rationale

To explore ES experience, aspects of ES identity representation must be studied to illustrate the connections between the nature of oppression for minority groups in education and comics publishing. This study uses comics as a research method (Packalen & Sharma, 2007) to 8

examine how comics can communicate personal narratives, specifically between Tiffany (an art student) and myself (Tiffany’s former art teacher) (Wysocki & Catala-Carrasco, 2018).

According to Packalen and Sharma (2007), the comics method acts as a communication tool based on principles of open access, such as promoting and sharing knowledge at no financial cost to readers, locally sourced knowledge, and the knowledge derived from a community’s experience. Packalen and Sharma argue that using comics as a research method transmits personal observations that affect communities through the development of sequential art. In this study, Tiffany and I co-author a comic book to share with a portion of the U.S. population of disabled women art students and teachers of color. Communicating our narrative through the medium of comic books was appropriate for this dissertation because of our shared history of making comic book art in a high school art class, along with the shared aim to communicate our narratives with the population of U.S. women art students and teachers of color with disabilities who read comics.

My discussion of ES representation addresses the larger matter of questioning, critiquing, and challenging patriarchal, racist, and ableist politics present in comics publishing and education. Research on comics and education demonstrate the connection between the fields of study directly relating to art both reflecting and informing the culture from which it is created.

For example, the school-age children in the United States have a high comics readership, with

43% of fourth-graders reporting that they read comics at least once per month (Ogle et al., 2003).

As a result, many U.S. school students are able to comprehend the themes in comics by making individual and collective meaning (Gude, 2008, 2009) within the contents of comics. According to artist and art education scholar, Olivia Gude, collective meaning as part of making meaning is defined as a central curricular goal of art education that “supports both the interpreter and the 9

maker in making nuanced observations of form, imagery, metaphors, antecedent practices, related concepts, and social and political implications” (2008, p. 98). Gude’s claim reveals how a work of art holds collective meaning that contributes to, and shapes, the culture from which it is made. Through artwork and narrative, the creators of the comic book shape their culture using informed context by collectively drawing specifically from ES experiences. Since comics produce and represent culture, studying the creation and reception of comics featuring ES narratives provide art education and women’s studies scholars an examination of ideologies linked to multiple minority oppression.

The comics medium visually communicates our narrative because of its ability to juxtapose images and text. The relationship between the images and text presented in a comic book produces tension between the two forms of information. According to comics scholar,

Charles Hatfield (2005), comics tension occurs when readers must make certain judgments when engaged in reading a comics narrative and is a fundamental component of alternative and mainstream U.S. comics. Hatfield (2005) outlined several types of tensions used in comics, including pictographic language. One of the tensions that affects comic book readers employs a juxtaposition of visual and verbal symbols that function diegetically and non-diegetically.

Hatfield describes visual and verbal tension as “characterized [by] the clash and collaboration of different codes of signification” (2005, p. 134). Image and textual tension cause readers to read and see comics as nonhierarchical parts of a comic book narrative by showing words and reading images.

Comic book readers participate in interpreting an author’s narrative when interpreting tensions; readers are affected by both the story itself and the storytelling style. Hatfield (2005) describes comics as composed of several kinds of tension that involve the reader who must 10

consider their relation to the world in which the comic book takes place, and the actions of its characters, as well as how the narrative is communicated. These potentialities differ from a reader’s engagement with the conventional written text or artwork. Jason Helms (2010), a comics scholar who incorporated traditional text chapters among three comics sections in his dissertation, described an interplay of figure and discourse in comics. His investigation into teaching with comics encouraged readers to look at the conversations going on between the images and the words. By obliging readers to see words and read images, “The comic artist engages in these interplays more consciously than perhaps in any other medium…that is comics uniqueness and strength” (Helms, 2010, p. 30). The use of visual and verbal communication across panels in comics is a way of conceptualizing the understanding ES identities. As my primary source of inquiry, the comic book Tiffany and I co-authored uses visual-verbal tension to reveal our personal historical commentary, and thus influences the visual presentation of the narrative.

Applying the comics method was predicated by comics studies discourse regarding how teaching and researching comics involves interdisciplinarity, the academic publishing of comics, and the audiences targeted by comics scholarship. In their roundtable discussion on comics and methodology, comics studies researchers, Davis, Beaty, Bukatman, Jenkins, and Woo (2017) discussed how their theoretical arguments are articulated by using the comics format. Jenkins

(2017) explained that “it’s hard to think—for those of us primed to think of scholarship as text— it’s challenging to think of text and pictures as a way of moving forward our scholarly arguments” (p. 67). Scholarship that exemplifies ways to use comics can be seen in an issue of

DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly (Whitson & Salter, 2015), which published authors’ comics-based essays on topics of media studies and digital humanities discourse. The issue 11

explores sequential art, in particular comics, as a method for communicating processes and results of scholarship through interdisciplinary, arts-based experimentation (Salter, Whitson &

Helms, 2018). A comics method creates scholarship that engages with the cultural discourse of disabled women art students and teachers of color through visual-textual means. In alignment with the comics method practice of sharing community issues within a community, the dialogue from one former ES art student and art teacher is shared with a larger art student and teacher community.

Woven, the comic book created as part of the comics method used in this study, involved co-authors and an illustrator who identify as ESs. Comics written by ESs and other marginalized populations documenting their narratives can intervene critically in an oversaturation of stories about disabled people of color written by White, male, typically abled comics creators. Tim

Hanley (2014), a comic book historian, publishes a seasonal analysis revealing gender and racial differences in the authorship and creation of comics and graphic novels. According to Hanley

(2011), comics are male-dominated. This is more than anecdotal, not with solid numbers or breakdowns behind it, but is indicative of what women are creating in the industry. Hanley analyzes women in comics statistics in terms of the total number of people working on the book in the following categories: cover writer, penciler, inker, colorist, letterer, editor, and assistant editor. Hanley’s research shows the span of White men authorship in mainstream comics, reporting that the demographics of comic book creators exhibit little variation outside of White authorship. In recent years, 1.2% Black, 6.8% Asian, and 11.5% Hispanic, or Latina/o creators have received credits in Marvel and DC Comics publications, compared with 78.9% White comics creators (Hanley, 2014). I argue that such reports are essential to inform the perspectives of ES students and teachers who engage in making comics. This study’s development and 12

application of intersectional discourse allows for an examination of sexist, racist, and ableist practice by the exploration comics content and authorship. Overwhelming the market, 84.5% of comic book creators—including but not limited to colorists, cover artists, editors, and pencilers who received listings on both Marvel and DC Comics and graphic novel releases—are White, typically abled men (Hanley, 2018). This is significant because Marvel and DC Comics dominate the comic book market as the two largest publishers and corporations producing comics in U.S. society.

This study brings theoretical perspectives from intersectional theory to analyze such reports that evaluate comics minority group authorship, readership, and design in the United

States. According to a 2017 global market research study, the comics and graphic novels category in the U.S. trade book market experienced a compound annual growth of 15% from

2015 to 2017, making it one of the highest-growth categories in the trade book marketplace

(Riley, 2017). By examining the comics readership and authorship population from the intersectional feminist perspective, this study outlines the potential of ES stories affecting a growing group of readers.

While the perspectives and experiences of typically abled White men have a wider reach through comics owing to their dominance in publishing and authorship, narratives written by people from racial, gender, and ability minority groups exist in both mainstream and alternative comics. A majority group refers to a group of people considered to have a shared identity and experience (Yamanaka, 2004), holding the most authority or power in a particular society. A group of people, such as those who are considered, classed, or located together, are defined as a minority group if they experience a pattern of disadvantages or inequality (Healey, 2009). This minority status can indicate a student’s distribution of resources and power. In an ethnographic 13

study of ethnic disproportionality in U.S. special education placement, Harry and Klingner

(2014) use the term “minority” to describe students while acknowledging that the population is considered a majority in other societal aspects. I agree with Harry and Klingner that a minority group can have a majority presence in certain situations, such as a student population in the

United States. For example, the U.S. Census (2015) describes a majority-minority society as “the point at which the non-Hispanic White population alone will comprise less than 50 percent of the nation’s total population” (p. 9). This study’s research focuses on students from multiple, intersecting minority groups that draw attention to the majority-minority school population in

U.S. society. Furthermore, I agree with Harry and Klingner’s study because Tiffany’s and my experiences confirm the presence of multiple minority student bodies who are disadvantaged and hold less power in their society than their more empowered counterparts. The co-authored comic book reflects this population by visualizing the gendered, racial, and ableist experiences of one art student and art teacher in a critical examination of marginalized identities.

The comics medium helps me to consider ways in which this population of arts students and teachers’ lived experiences are valued in education. Comics are so diverse in their content that some scholars would point out that generalizing their use in researching lived experience may undermine my argument. While it is true that comics focused on lived experience produce a variety of study, I maintain that the concepts comics use, such as closure and masking (McCloud

1993) help to acknowledge the role of this narrative in arts-based research method. Those unfamiliar with the difference between content and concepts would be interested to learn that comic book content in this study recollects the time Tiffany and I spent together as student and teacher, revealing in our own words what transpired in order to provide an account of how power shifted from teacher to student. Comics concepts, on the other hand, are chosen by the artist, 14

conveyed by the art, and perceived by the reader. Concepts have the ability to inform learning and produce knowledge. Knowledge production is observed when a reader perceives pictures and text that are not inherently connected, or when a comic character is illustrated in simplistic ways. The concept of closure involves the reader makes connections between panels by comparing one to another within a whole comic page the concept of masking allows readers to identify more easily to a minimally detailed character, creating a strong emotional response to the comics content. Readers have the crucial role of realizing the connections between sequenced panels, shifting control of knowledge production away from the creators of the comic book.

Tiffany and my memories are therefore shared by readers because of their participation in making meaning from the story.

As the National Center for Education Statistics (2017) and the U.S. Department of

Education (2015a, 2015b) have reported, children of color represent the largest number of enrolled students with disabilities registered in the U.S. public education system. Despite these findings, disability studies scholars (e.g., Annamma, 2015; Morris, 2016) have documented the omission of Black women and girl students with disabilities from education research.

Researchers have not adequately answered the call for research that focuses on the perspectives of students of color with disabilities. If the U.S. Department of Education statistics are evidence of a minority-majority group, then theorizing ways in which the dominance of racism, sexism, and ableism is problematic for ESs is necessary to refrain from the concerns of educational needs. This circumstance remains a heightened concern for those who identify with this minority group (Crockett & Malley, 2017), providing the impetus for my study.

Critical race education theorist Annamma (2018) is right that scholars need an awareness of ways in which education systems can value some student identities over others. Evidence 15

shows that narratives of former students of color with disabilities explain how intersecting identities impacted their educational experiences. For instance, Audre Lorde (2015), a Black, lesbian, cancer patient who chose not to wear a prosthesis, shared her experiences about her past as a student and her existing life circumstances. Lorde discussed cancer, trauma, and silence, and how she came to realize that her story could help others affirm their voice (De Veaux, 2004).

Transforming silence into language, as Lorde argued, can lead to self-revelation, with “attempts to break the silence and bridge some of those differences” between her intersecting identities (cit.

Ryan, 2001, p. 83). Lorde (1997) asked readers to consider how future societies “may depend upon the ability of all women to identify and develop new definitions of power and new patterns of relating across difference” (p. 379). Layers of difference shaped Lorde’s educational experiences as she noted the pressure to fit into the normative culture of her classroom. Lorde

(1983) suggested recognizing differences among women of color in order to connect to personal power.

Adding to Lorde’s point, I would include that writing about ESs educational experiences demands a framework that addresses identity status in terms of how women of color experience power socially, politically, and culturally. Disabled students of color grow and learn with the sociocultural reality shaped by their cultural experiences. These students are misunderstood and misrepresented when their perspectives are misunderstood in relation to differences in their reality compared with the reality of majority group members. This study explores knowledge and experiences of ESs by creating a comic book, a site for minority group members to read writings that reflect ES identity. This comic book is also a source for majority group members to learn about the experiences of people who are different from them. Vernon (1996) confirmed that

“There is little known about the experiences of Black disabled women. There is particularly little 16

research and writing from our point of view” (p. 52). This is not to say there is not any published writing on the subject but rather that the dominant discourse causes problems with reducing the qualities of multiple marginalized identities for the convenience of situating them compartmentally in separate fields of study. Vernon is surely right about point of view research for ESs because, similarly, disability studies scholar, Amy Petersen (2006, 2012), described the rarity of documenting the experiences of Black women with disabilities. Petersen has argued that representing the individual lives of disabled Black women has resulted in scholars discussing one discourse, such as Blackness, womanhood, or ability status, over another. To study how identifying as a person of color, a woman, and disabled affects art education experiences, this dissertation concentrates on the intersections of multiple identities. Thus, according to Petersen

(2012), it is important to understand “how best to examine and represent the multidimensional nature of these individuals’ experiences…” (p. 802).

This study explores ES art student and teacher experience by analyzing literature and data sources related to ESs. The study vindicates an intersectional analysis or, intersectional lens, as the focus of inequalities for ESs are based on multiple perspectives. The concept of an intersectional lens stems from Kimberlé Crenshaw (1989) who theorized how discrimination against Black women engenders marginalization, silencing, and the distortion of their experiences. Crenshaw (1996) has described how intersectionality, as part of Black women’s multidimensional experience, can aid in viewing and analyzing Black women’s experiences from a single-axis point. Using an intersectional analysis and thinking intersectionally in this study involves an examination from a dynamic perspective, or lens, to simultaneously regard the convergence of social positions. Intersectionality, as employed in feminist work, denotes how women are simultaneously positioned as women and, for example, as people of color, working- 17

class individuals, or disabled, rejecting the notion that people can be reduced to a single identity category (Phoenix & Pattynama, 2006). A dynamic examination of power addresses the complexity of people’s experiences, including the ways in which women of color contend with misrepresentation, underrepresentation, subordination, and oppression.

ESs’ experiences, one specific minority group in a diverse U.S. student population, are affected by the ways in which their society values their identity. Since ES students experience school in a racist, ableist, and sexist society, their identity presents a reality that non-ES students may never experience. To make visible the social processes affecting ES art students and teachers, intersectionality provides a necessary frame by which to focus on the various institutional and historical contexts that subordinate this minority group.

Women of color with disabilities navigate their statuses of ability, gender, and race simultaneously with each axis informing the others. While some of these experiences may be similar to those of the other axes, they are not identical nor additive, thus necessitating my creation of the term exceptional sista. Before I created this term, Eddie Glenn (1995) used the phrase “triple jeopardy syndrome” (p.66) in a Howard University study to represent disabled

Black women’s unique experiences at the intersection of race, gender, and disability. Instead of describing women of color with disabilities as having ‘triple jeopardy,’ my use of the word

“exceptional” carries two meanings: (1) it indicates the remarkable quality of a person and (2) describes people with disabilities within the disability studies community. My use of the word

“sista” is a variation of the word “sister,” indicating a link to Black diasporic cultures that use the word to address a proud Black woman or woman of color. I also relate the connection of ESs to the concept of “fictive kinship.” Harris-Perry (2011) described fictive kinship as “connections between members of a group who are unrelated by blood or marriage but who nonetheless share 18

reciprocal social or economic relationships” (p. 201). The ways in which an ES community member’s actions or experiences hold relevance to other community members demonstrate a shared identity. Indeed, ES community members may not be related by blood but rather by a bond can be created through a familial connection to one another. The term Exceptional Sista was developed to crip and decolonize a label of multiple minority group identity through its relation to kinship from like experience.

It would seem that terminology and language signify a measure of society’s control and attitudes towards minority groups. Art education scholar, Blandy (1991), for example, expressed discontent when he perceived artwork by people with disabilities who were labeled as “curious” or categorized by similarities in form, style, or subject matter, and such designations as “outsider art,” “mad,” or “l’art brut” (p. 139). The connotation that art made by disabled persons is unrefined is a crude notion comparable to typically abled artists. Highlighting art by labeling the artist in this manner demonstrates that language markers can emphasize individual difference over artistic medium or movement, reducing a person to a label. Holding the belief that a label of disability is the defining aspect of a person (Brisenden, 1986) stems from the medical model of disability, where a person’s disability status is viewed as related to their health. Take, for example, the United Nations, an international organization that currently uses disability definitions created over 30 years ago by the World Health Organization. According to these institutions, the definition of disabled person describes any restriction or lack resulting from an impairment of ability to perform an activity in the manner or within the range considered normal for a human being (United Nations, 1982). Instead of first presenting the disability label ascribed to a person, another view is that since the environment and social situations change for people, their disability status also changes. Regarding disability in this way is usually described as the 19

social model disability (Oliver 1983). The social model of disability describes how ability does not originate from an individual but rather from the inability of their environment to accommodate their atypical requirements (Gibson, 2018). Thus, the social model of disability is used to consider reframing the restrictions caused by a society lacking an inherently neutral view of disability.

Self-representations by some disabled women artists of color provide a contrasting narrative to the medical model of disability and instead embrace the social model. For example, an illustration by Afro-Mexican webcomics artist, Ashanti Fortson (Figure 1), depicts a woman of color winning a race while wearing prosthetic legs. In this panel from a multi-panel series on women of color with disabilities, Fortson highlights the potentiality of the quality of life for those ESs. Fortson’s inspiration stemmed from her experiences as a chronically ill person with autism in a series highlighting women and girls of color with disabilities. Fortson described her dissatisfaction with the way in which media portrays disabled people. When asked to discuss why she created a series of artworks illustrating women of color with disabilities, Fortson explained wanting to “share a portrayal that felt more human—less about “what’s missing”

(nothing) and more about how we are able to do the things we love” (A. Fortson, personal communication, October 2018). U.S. society has a division in the power, representation, and education for ESs that must be considered when viewing their comics. As seen with Fortson’s example, ES comics, can celebrate accurate representation of lived experience. In my view, however, comics featuring an ES narrative, especially those alternative comics authored by ESs, often provide commentary on the lack of visibility of ES identity represented in mainstream visual culture.

According to Bianca Xunise, a Black, female comics artist, illustrator, and designer, recognized how her intersectional identity as a Black woman with a mental health disorder positioned her with fewer opportunities than her typically abled, White, male artist peers. Xunise drew collaborative comics with her sibling as a child (“Kick ass chicks,” 2016). Comics were her first mechanism for processing worries, realizations, and other important moments by revisiting them through a familiar art medium. Having publicly posted her comics, Xunise is not interested in hiding her opinions or her past mental health disorders. Instead, ES comics artists declare self- acceptance and assert ES perspectives on topics of self-care, gender, race, and ability.

Figure 1. Prosthetics in Sports, second in a series of three illustrations, Ashanti Fortson, 2018. A brown-skinned woman with curly, flowing hair runs across a finish line. The image features her wearing a gold sleeveless shirt and gold shorts. The number 40 is printed on a small square piece of paper pinned to her shorts. Photographers capture the moment from the sidelines of the track, where other Olympic runners follow behind the woman. The woman smiles with arms extended to the sky as gold stars trail behind her path.

To combat the insecurities developed by the bombardment of media representing identities different from her own, Xunise developed a six-panel comic strip depicting two parts of a memory (Figure 2). Images show actions during her therapy session, with text narrating introspective dialogue that hints at a subsequent change in mentality. The use of the past tense in the fourth panel indicates Xunise’s beliefs about her identity, while the fifth panel illustrates why

others concluded that she would not be able to achieve her goal of becoming a Black woman comic artist. Xunise’s story exemplifies women of color with disabilities’ self-doubt regarding their professional ability. Orenstein (2013) has discussed how many young women fall into traditional patterns of low self-image, self-doubt, and self-censorship that affect how their

creative and intellectual potential is realized. Orenstein mentioned only a few girls she has spoken with have ever been told that girls cannot do what boys can. However, all of them “on some level, had learned this lesson anyway” (p. xxix). Linda Nochlin (1971) has also noted the absence of female or Black equivalents of great White male artists, and argued that because of oppressive and discouraging receptions, people who did not have the “good fortune to be born

White, preferably middle class, and above all, male” (p. 231) cannot obtain notability as a great visual artist. Obtaining fame under these circumstances demonstrates how women and people of color wrestle with inner forces, such as self-doubt, along with outer forces, like institutional racism or sexism in comics, when creating art, Xunise also addressed the “good fortune” of being a White male artist in the fifth panel of Figure 2, arranging the narrative to address how her identity categories can be a disadvantage when trying to relate to comic book characters. The first panel reveals that Xunise occasionally thinks back to this defining moment. By doing this, the comic panels display a narrative reflecting Xunise’s past linked to her present and the changes that occurred between those instances.

Figure 2. Untitled comic strip, Bianca Xunise, 2018. The comic strip panels feature black and white images and text on a white background. The images show a curly-haired young woman’s sad face while she hugs a spiral-bound sketchbook to her chest. A speech bubble states her beliefs. Two comic book examples show White men on the covers with titles reading “Sad Emo Guy” and “My Average Life.” The last panel features the curly-haired girl on a comic page smiling and saying, “Hey!” Panel 1 – Sometimes I remember sitting in my therapist’s office. Panel 2 – Clutching unto my sketchbooks. Panel 3 – Tears running down my face. Panel 4 – “Nobody cares about a Black artist like me,” is what I truly believed. Panel 5 – Because all I ever saw work by White men about White men. Panel 6 – So why would anyone care about work by me?

Xunise’s observations tell her personal history of missing ES identity in visual culture, while also declaring her own comics artist identity. If artist identity associates with facets of a person’s intersecting identities then it is necessary to examine the relationship between the two.

Xunise’s experiences correlate with the research findings of Sulewski, Boeltzig, and Hasnain

(2012) who investigate how young visual artists with disabilities developed their artist identities by conducting in-depth case study of their art and personal dialogue. The study outlined the ways in which a student’s disability and artist identity intersect. Majority of the surveyed students disclosed that artist and disability labels were mutually beneficial, describing disability as a factor in choosing to be an artist, or disability as an asset to their artwork. The evidence of this study shows that examining artist identity and minority group identity can lead to insights about the educational significance of expressing their intersecting identities through art. My study contributes to the examination of the role of art making in the identities of ESs by studying how

ES comics artists, like Xunise, make art describing how their experiences relating to various aspects of their identity.

Research Questions

This study assesses comic book depictions of ES identity to identify and interpret the stigmas related to representations of ESs. By examining the subjugations of ESs represented in comics, I explore ES identity in art education—both teaching and learning—for ES students and teachers. I argue that one ES art student-teacher comic book story presenting a personal, gendered, racial, and disability narrative affects the beliefs and motivations of ES art student- teacher community members.

1) In what way did making a comic book impact the narratives of one ES art student and

one teacher? 25

2) How did making a comic book communicate themes from an ES art student and teacher

narrative to the ES community?

Scope: Assumptions and Limitations

My own experiences and writings on arts-based research and narrative inquiry have helped me to see that a comics methodology can aid in reimagining comics as sources for collaboration with underrepresented minority populations. This study provides insight into the shared experiences of other students and teachers of color with disabilities. Because our experiences are unique to our narrative, other people who share this identity may not relate to our exact story; thus, I note the difficulty of generalizing the ES perspective among all persons who can identify as ES.

Organization of the Study

In Chapter 1, I introduce how making comics representing ES identity subverts or supports identity representation by examining several ES artists’ work. I use artwork examples to depict exceptional sistahood narratives, highlighting the educational, societal, and authorship obstacles facing ESs. I discuss how Tiffany’s and my account of experiences in art education suggest how our stories reflect accurate representation of ES art student and teacher experiences and beliefs to members of the ES community through themes in the comic book narrative. The

ES narrative (i.e., an account of experiences or perspectives) was told through a comic book medium that focused on the perspectives of one art student and one art teacher. This chapter identifies the argument and problem of misrepresenting ES identity by highlighting historical and contemporary ESs and ES comic book representations that fit the parameters of the term. This chapter establishes that majority of U.S. mainstream comic book authors create ES comics characters without the lived experience of being a disabled woman of color. Establishing comics 26

authorship and readership aids in clarifying why I study the art education experiences of art students who identify as women of color with disabilities.

Chapter 2 features a literature review on how racism, sexism, and ableism are produced and perpetuated by circulating stereotyped images and rhetoric. I use Critical Race Theory

(CRT), Dis/ability Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality to discuss ES representation in comics with characters who are identified as persons of color, women, and persons with disabilities to understand how ES identity depicted in the comics medium reflects an accurate or misrepresentation of experience. I further explore how characters in comics engage readers in narratives that may inaccurately reflect minority identities in U.S. society. The first part of this chapter briefly describes the research on ES identity that integrates components of applicable theory (CRT, Dis/ability Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality). An overview of the theories used provides this study with an understanding of the intersecting, simultaneous nature of oppression for ESs. I present examples of existing comics featuring aspects of ES identity to use these theories in context, and thus demonstrate how society produces and reflects racism, sexism, and ableism by creating and circulating stereotyped images.

Chapter 3 explains the methods and methodology of this study. Research methods include case study interviews, creating a comic book, and surveying readers. The research methodology, a comics methodology, helped theoretically analyze the methods used to conduct comics research and critique the study methods. The comics methodology employed guided my research practices, and I explain that by using a comics method, as well as survey and interviews, this study created and shared beliefs of one ES art student and art teacher with members of the ES community. I describe how I draw from collaboration, arts-based research and narrative inquiry, to help produce Tiffany’s and my narrative in the comic book. The comics methodology outlines 27

specific processes used to elicit a thematic story in a comics narrative form. I review the forms of case study and survey data, data collection, and methods employed, as well as discuss the procedure to indicate findings in Chapter 4.

Chapter 4 discusses how I develop an analysis by drawing on theories (CRT, Dis/ability

Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality), along with narrative inquiry and arts-based research methods to create the comic book that Tiffany and I co-authored. The analysis involves discovering how making a comic book reflects the relationship between Tiffany and me, as past student and teacher, respectively, and as women of color with disabilities. By analyzing the comic book images and text using a disability, critical race, and intersectional theoretical perspective, I identify themes in our narrative and the ways in which making and sharing our comic book communicates those themes to the ES community. This chapter concludes with a discussion of the study results, addresses missing data, and contextualizes the data in terms of the research questions.

Chapter 5 offers a summation of the purpose of the study, research questions, and methodology employed. I discuss my findings by asserting their relevance to the extant literature, and by revealing my conclusions about ES identity representation in art education and comic book authorship. I also discuss implications for practice by addressing how my study informs art education and women’s studies’ scholars with each specific finding. I further discuss how this study explores the way in which ES identity is oppressed or supported through comics and educational institutions’ policy, actions, and images and suggest that future research is needed to explore this topic at greater depth.

CHAPTER 2: INVESTIGATING SILENCED AND CONCEALED NARRATIVES This chapter reviews the literature on how society produces racism, sexism, and ableism by circulating stereotyped images, which in turn affect societal beliefs. I overview the intersectional identity of ESs (exceptional sistas) to provide an understanding of the intersecting, simultaneous nature of oppression of art students and teachers who identify with this multiple minority status. I discuss the ways gender, race, and ability representation undermine or support oppression against ESs. By critiquing ES representation with CRT, Dis/ability Critical Race

Theory, and intersectionality, this study situates the history of ES identity in comics relative to my claim that controlling representation controls societal beliefs. These theories exemplify persons of color, women, and persons with disabilities who, in the comics medium, often represent negative stereotypes, including but not limited to sexual deviant, pathetic invalid, and drug-addicted “badass.” This chapter exposes how conducting the study by researching comics authorship, readership, and representation is essential to respond to the theories encompassing

ES identity. These theories best relate to the problem statement and research questions, sharing equal relation to ES representation in comics and education. To clarify my position on ES representation, I present examples of comics featuring ES identity and discuss their representation in the context of mainstream and alternative comics publishing along with representation in society. I provide examples of comics telling stories that support or reject prejudices about ES identity. I connect these examples to discourse on social constructs and existing knowledge in the fields of art education and women’s studies.

In conducting research on the effects of creating comics with ES art students and teachers, I address exceptional sistahood identity by blending parts of Dis/ability Critical Race

Theory, CRT, and intersectionality to account for oppression and power inequalities specific to 29

the ES population. CRT, for example, does not act as one position but instead represents a complex discourse in which several lenses coincide (Kraehe, Gaztambide-Fernández, &

Carpenter, 2018). I use CRT to examine the innate racism in society that is supported by dominant power structures, such as White supremacy and its marginalization of people of color. I employ Dis/ability Critical Race Theory to inform oppression from multiple identity standpoints that people of color with disabilities face. Both disability and race discourses are grown out of movements to counter and critique hegemonic power (Bell, 2010), which is useful for this study because of my critique of mainstream comics as an oppressive power over ESs. I use CRT and

Dis/ability Critical Race Theory within the framework of an intersectional lens. Intersectionality, in conjunction with CRT and Dis/ability Critical Race Theory, forms my multi-dimensional approach that I use to analyze race, gender, and disability in comics and education. Delgado et al.

(2000) have stated, “Intersectionality means the examination of race, sex, class, national origin, and sexual orientation, and how their combination plays out in various settings” (p. 51), which is helpful for this study because of my critique of education for ESs.

Intersectionality as Feminist Lens

Separating identity categories of gender, race, and ability risks inaccurate analysis of multiple oppressions. Exceptional sisterhood encompasses multiple identity categories, and is situational because of the specific identities it includes. Therefore, defining more clearly exceptional sistahood requires a look into how intersectionality operates for ESs and researchers who study ES identity. Spade (2013) has noted that intersectionality is not about addition. Rather, it is a way to consider subjection that rejects declaring universal experiences of a given oppressive force. Scholars studying ES identity have approached theorizing intersecting discourses in many ways. For example, Dis/ability Critical Race Theory scholar, Ayesha Vernon 30

(1999), has suggested that scholars link the experiences of minority groups of disabled people simultaneously, and thus offer a common ground for unity in the disabled people’s movement.

This position on unity in the ES community works for Vernon’s research needs, while other scholars use intersectionality as their central position. McCall (2005, 2008) has found that intersectionality works as a multidisciplinary methodology because it analyzes the different ways in which social divisions construct each other and how they relate to political and subjective constructions of identities. By ensuring that the theory used in this dissertation supports my simultaneous analysis of ES art students and teachers, I employ three theories in different ways throughout the dissertation to consider examining comprehensively ES perspectives of comics and education.

Intersectionality, the first of these three theories is utilized by feminist researchers,

Collins and Bilge (2016). In their book, Intersectionality, the writers theorized that intersectionality exists both in theory and in practice, for teachers, school personnel, and high school students. They examined how intersectionality theory, as an element in the education of oppressed peoples, empowers learners. In their chapter concerning intersectionality and critical education, Collins and Bilge critique American educational theorist John Dewey’s (1916) educational model of participatory democracy, demonstrating that his theory fails to account for preexisting social inequities and the effects of neoliberalism in public education. Additionally,

Collins and Bilge have discussed how critical educational theorist and philosopher, Paulo Freire, helped to inform intersectionality through his discussion of oppression. Freire (1972) first used the term “praxis,” which he defined as “theory and practice; it is reflection and action” (p. 125), when examining the emotional needs of students, which he grounded in “the practice of education” (2016, p. 161). Collins and Bilge (2016) described Freire’s term oppressed as a 31

reaction to the social injustices and inequities that students face as a result of not being a part of the dominant racial, gender, class/social, age, ethnic, religious, or citizen group. Each facet of these various inequities can be classified differently and are thus subjective. Hence, researchers must address social injustice as subjective oppression that impacts students’ experiences. Collins and Bilge have also discussed the ways in which intersectionality is part of a shared narrative that can be applied both practically and creatively to inform solutions to problems related to minority group social injustices and inequities. Collins and Bilge’s use of intersectionality to critique education narratives for women of color indicates that ESs need multiple ways of expressing the inequality faced as a result of their intersecting identities. In this study, I use intersectionality to examine ES identity without privileging one component of identity over another. Rather, intersectionality helped me elucidate links between the patriarchy, ableism, racism, and other systems of oppression. Its primary intervention added complexity to my understanding of existing identity categories and how intersectionality can usefully be employed to analyze how an experience of subjectivity (Frie & Reis, 2001) or domination depends on location and moment (Nash, 2011).

This study not only brings to focus the intersections of one oppression with another but also the varying ways scholars position women of color with disabilities. Women of color reside in multiple theoretical territories, which gender and sexuality studies scholar Rachel Lee addressed by critiquing the term’s usefulness in describing the intersecting oppression found when examining gender and race. Lee (2000) stated that intersectional terminology represents and collects too many specific experiences under broad titles, further arguing that intersectionality risks diminishing the impact of certain intersections of gender, race, and cultural collaborations, and thus “relegating women of color to no place and everyplace” (p. 93). Lee, 32

however, described the appeal of “nonterritoriality” (p. 91) associated with intersectionality as an exemption from producing dominations. Lee’s argument about issues with intersectionality appears to be a cautionary declaration that race-conscious perspectives focused on gender can still fail to develop new knowledge when approaching identity representation. To ensure that my examination of the experiences and representation of ESs brings attention to their specific ways of knowing, I conducted this study with the understanding that intersectionality may mean different things for different scholars. I define intersectionality as a theory and framework that assists in the critique of relations between identity and power. A well-known example of theorizing the positionality of multiple identities and power is the work of feminist scholar,

Gloria Anzaldúa (2009). Lee critiqued a broad use of intersectionality to position gender and power relations, whereas scholar, Anzaldúa, embraced covering multiple social categories.

Anzaldúa stated the following regarding intersecting identities:

Mestizas live in between different worlds, in Nepantla. We are forced to (or choose) to

live in categories that defy binaries of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Living in

intersections, in cusps, we must constantly operate in negotiation mode… caught between

cultures and can simultaneously be insiders, outsiders, and other-siders… often pressured

to choose one tribe over another… disturbing the dominant discourse of race, gender, and

others. (as cited in Anzaldúa & Keating, 2015, p. 3)

As a feminist scholar researching ES representation, I came to know ES identity through my own relationship with power in a similar way that Anzaldúa described as living in intersections. Anzaldúa’s description is how I have come to know oppression facing ESs by operating in educational systems that privilege certain identities and abilities over others. For

Anzaldúa, border-crossing is inclusive of knowledge within the intersections of race, ethnicity, 33

class, sexuality, and gender (Wekker, 2017). Anzaldúa border crossing is one way to describe shifting consciousness that I realize as a negotiation of power informed by intersecting identities.

This embrace of nonterritorial modes of consciousness echoes Angela Davis’ (1994) belief that

“effective versions of feminism acknowledge the various ways gender, class, race and sexual orientation inform each other” (Davis & Martinez, 1994, p. 4). Intersectionality, in short, may vary in description by the individuals employing it but remains an interdisciplinary theory that helps me critique ES position in society. Furthermore, refining my use of intersectionality included my creation of the phrase “exceptional sista”. For example, triple jeopardy syndrome

(Glenn, 1990) inadequately defines disabled women of color because of its negative connotation.

My critique of the term triple jeopardy is that the available terminology insufficiently describes

ES identity because of to its negative implications. This examination of the term led me to create a new term, exceptional sista, with a neutral or positive meaning. Critiquing defining terms was necessary to address how and what identity labels would be used to mobilize and communicate

Tiffany’s and my story with the ES art student-teacher population. Using intersectionality, I embraced intersectional knowledge that Lee discussed to demonstrate how this study addresses the compounded discrimination against women of color with disabilities in areas of society.

Black women face a multiplicity of barriers, such as pay gap (Chapman, & Benis, 2017) and access to mental health services (Ward, Clark, & Heidrich, 2009). Black disability scholars speculated that ES experience those disparities due to the combination of ableism, racism, and sexism in U.S. society (Vernon, 1996). It is central to this research, therefore, to reflect upon a specific concern of the ES community, which is the greater risk of encountering negative attitudes and behaviors because of their intersection with gender, race, and disability status.

McCall (2005) explained an approach to intracategorical intersectional feminism as 34

relationships. Scholars engage in “neglected points of intersection to reveal the complexity of lived experience” (McCall, p. 1774) to reflect multiple subordinate positionality as opposed to a dominant position of a social majority. I apply intersectionality when examining institutional inequality and oppression facing ESs. If, however, my critique of power is to respond to an intersectional framing of ES art student and teacher experience, then I must also use Critical

Race Theory as part of a race, gender, and ability-conscious framework.

Black and Brown Ink: A Justification for Critical Race Theory

Critical Race Theory is a critical way of looking at race relations in the construction of social roles and power relationships that uphold the dominant population’s interest in society.

Looking at the narrative of racism in the US for ESs, early critical race theorists reported on the disparities in educational advancements between U.S. minorities and U.S. Whites (Lieberson,

1980). According to Stanley Lieberson (1980), to former president of the American Sociological

Association, an average school term for Black students in the US during the early 1900s was 21 days shorter than term for White students. Examining the data in this study, led to identifying systemic factors that prevented students of color from attending school. Attendance disparity was documented over 60 years ago.

Yet, disparities continue to persist between students of color and their White counterparts today. A study conducted by the Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) on behalf of the U.S.

Department of Education (2019) documented chronic absenteeism of minority student populations. In their comparison of 2015-16 school year attendance data, American Indian and

Pacific Islander students are over 50% more likely than White students to lose three weeks of school or more, while Black students are 40% more likely, and Hispanic students 17% more likely. Moreover, the study found that students with disabilities are about 50% more likely to be 35

chronically absent than students without disabilities. With decades between the two studies and a nation-wide focus on low levels of school attendance, one might question how this issue could still persist. The answer may be linked to factors of race. Specifically, educational policy and practices maintain white ideologies that impact school attendance (Leitch, 2017). Ultimately, if the significance of a critical race framework relies on investigating dominant positions in society, then examining the social differences of race expands my understanding of ES identity.

The point of interpreting the relationship between power and race is not for art education and women’s studies scholars to remark merely on the oppressive practices in U.S. education systems. Rather, interpreting power and race relations may allow one to recognize an educational system is limited by those stakeholders—teachers and other administrative figures—who hold power. For teachers to address the instructional practices, learning experiences, and assessment of minority students, they must eliminate and disrupt educational racism by examining biases and understanding ways minority student perspectives are excluded in curricula. Critical race theorists, Gloria Ladson-Billings (1999), described Critical Race Theory principles while discussing its potential use as a theory in teacher education programs. One such principle of CRT acknowledged the importance of narratives and stories, which help teachers understand experiences that may represent confirmation or “counterknowledge” in their society (1999, p.

219). In Ladson-Billings’ examination of counter-narrative as methodological tool, she discussed how teachers can gain valuable societal insights by reading such stories. If teachers do not examine their biases, they may unintentionally perpetuate racism in their classrooms. Educators can address biases and racism by critically examining prejudices in their routine teaching strategies. Educators can use CRT to become more aware of how aspects of their identity, such as race and gender identity, affect students of color (Taylor, Gillborn, & Ladson-Billings, 2009). An 36

educator’s awareness of identity can also affect their curriculum, as well as what the curriculum itself means in relation to the interplay of social and racial dynamics in the classroom.

Acknowledging the importance of examining their curriculum can help teachers support all students. One way teachers can do this is by considering the curricular choices made when instructing minority group students. Critical education theorist, Peter McLaren (2003), has stated that a curriculum serves, in part, to prepare students for dominant or subordinate positions existing in society. Students of color represent the majority student populations in U.S. urban public education systems (Lewis, Hancock, James, & Larke, 2008), yet a study outlining racial and ethnic demographic reports in the U.S. urban school population revealed an 84% White teaching staff (Dee, 2004). To prepare all teaching staff in a better way, measures should be taken to help them understand identities and populations with which they may be unfamiliar. Culturally relevant curricula (Gay, 2010) along with a focus on socially conscious pedagogy (Rodríguez,

2014) enable teachers to embrace the idea that classrooms are neutral spaces unaffected by racism. Once educators address classroom spaces, policy, and practices, then they can begin moving forward to transform the academic performance of minority group students.

Ladson-Billings (2006) evaluated the achievement gap—a gap in academic achievement between minority and disadvantaged students and their White counterparts—by examining test scores, dropout rates, and advanced placement examinations to explain differences between the scores of White, Black, and Latinx students. She used CRT to reflect on how the U.S. education system prepares minority students for academic testing. Ladson-Billings posited that an

“education debt” (p. 5), created by historical, economic, sociopolitical, and moral decisions that characterize society, has led to the current achievement gap. She has argued that addressing the education disparity for students of color should involve creating images, further explaining that 37

“words are a limited way to fully represent” the issues minority students face, and that constructing images to illustrate the educational debt could compel citizens to change the divided society that leaves students behind (p. 10). Ladson-Billings’ example showed how using CRT helps to examine the statistical differences in educational outcomes between White students and students of color. The example also showed how statistical analysis led to theorizing ways in which to create a positive change for minority group student populations. Teachers who depart from their silence on race issues in educational institutions can be a component to the systemic change needed in education; CRT helps education to accomplish this by critically examining prejudice in their school’s culture as well as that of society at large.

Castagno (2008) conducted studies on White educators’ reluctance to discuss race based on the belief that doing so might upset the established social etiquette of a school’s dominant culture. She found that White educators who participated in the survey possessed a strong desire for comfort and “ideological safety” (2002, p. 315) within their classrooms, and tended to hold a shared allegiance to the status quo. Castagno describes educators’ avoidance of conversations about race with their students. Ultimately, teacher reservation to participate in these conversations can support and possibly perpetuate racist beliefs and actions. As a result, teachers exclude the discussion of race within schools on the grounds that it is an unacceptable topic for class discussion. Castagno has stated that “even though issues of race are always present and are often at the surface of school related discourse, practice, and policies, educators are consistently silent and socializing students to be silent about them” (p. 314), noting that perpetuating action on the topic of race and racial experience is inaction. Avoiding discussion about racial experience communicates the notion of talking about race as a privilege granted to certain people, particularly those in power, like teachers and school administrators. De-privileging these 38

majority narratives allows silent, or silenced students, and silenced teachers to use their voices, stories, and experiences through counter-storytelling (DeCuir & Dixson, 2004).

The five tenets of CRT include ordinariness, interest convergence, social construction, differential racialization, and storytelling. Counter-storytelling (part of the storytelling tenet of

CRT) and experiential knowledge decentralize oppression and racism (Taylor et al., 2009). Since stories of ES comics authors and one ES student and teacher were examined for the purpose of this dissertation, I used the storytelling tenet of CRT to expose inequalities stemming from ESs’ social differences, particularly their lived experience. Counter-storytelling is “a method of telling the stories of those people whose experiences are not often told” (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002).

When enacting counter-storytelling, a person describes the reality of minority students’ lives, helping readers to bridge the gaps between their worlds as outsiders and of those who align more with cultural hegemonies (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017; Hunn, Guy, & Mangliitz, 2006). Some scholars have found that counter-storytelling aided in creating new spaces to expose various experiences from people of color that were historically hidden from public knowledge. In a study describing counter-storytelling, cultural anthropologist, Lalitha Vasudevan (2004), co- constructed a space for contesting, re-imagining and reclaiming stories about the lives of a group of Black adolescent male students.

According to Vasudevan, the stories represent historically silenced voices. Sociologist

Bethan Harries (2014) defines silencing as the denial of the meanings and effects of race, or as simply ignoring the problems of race. I needed to critique majority group dominance over minority group narratives as part of a theoretical frame for this study; using CRT provided me with that component which addresses co-construction and imagining Tiffany’s and my ES narrative as creating a new space for ESs in comics. The comic book exemplifies a teacher who 39

uses their expertise to represent her students’ experience in their art education curriculum, which critical race scholars, Villegas and Irvine (2010), explained as an outcome of the enacting sensitivity and promotion of a minority student’s values, history, and norms.

Counter-storytelling is a part of CRT that has been used along with research methods that

I employed as part of this study, in particular, case study interviews. Examples of counter-stories illustrating intersections of gender and race include Griffin, Ward and Phillips’ (2014) study of

11 qualitative interviews with Black male faculty members at traditionally White institutions.

They worked collaboratively to identify prominent narrative themes across the interviews to identify a protagonist, Dr. Timesnow. This character helped readers to analyze and challenge perceptions of racism in higher education institutions by discussing real experiences through a fictive character. The interview data provided a scope of the daily experiences of these faculty members, including a discussion of imposter syndrome and examples of campus communities that supported faculty of color. Griffin et al. subsequently shared the counter-story to illustrate how Black men navigate and negotiate race and racialized oppression in their everyday academic lives. Griffin, Ward and Phillips exemplified how the storytelling tenet of CRT enabled readers to gain the perspective of a person from a minority group population, and how their educational experience was unjust compared to that of individuals in a majority group. Their study results indicated to me how CRT provided a frame for critical questioning of academia.

In my study, I critique art education by using CRT to examine how sharing the counter- story of one ES art student and teacher affects an ES community. Employing CRT in this research challenges me to acknowledge the notion that if all stories are created equally, then including an ES art education narrative should have a neutral effect on the readers of the story.

Surveying the readers of Tiffany’s and my story shows that making available a repository of ES 40

knowledge does not diminish other narratives. Instead, examining the way power, race, and racism are enacted by majority populations demonstrates that power is seen as finite and therefore should not be shared with a minority population. From the perspective of being Black and disabled, however, involves knowledge, opportunity, and education experiences that are different owing to the inclusion of ableism in literal and figurative barriers.

Tints and Shades: Black Disability Studies and Dis/ability Critical Race Theory

My auditory processing disorder (APD), and Tiffany’s amelia congenital disorder affect how we socially navigated school culture, often with a negative stigma towards disability. In fact, one study (Holzbauer, 2008) reported teachers’ (of students with disabilities) seeing school- related disability harassment take place many times throughout a school year. This discrimination is compounded by racial and sexist prejudices found in classroom that distort students’ learning opportunities (Gay, 2002). I used Dis/ability Critical Race Theory as a part of the field of Black disability studies to understand the oppression experienced by disabled students and teachers of color. Black disability studies emerged from discussions among disabled scholars of color (Lukin, 2006, 2013; Dunhamn et al., 2015) about their experiences in education, therefore I used Black disability studies to theorize and discuss the de-privileging of

ES students and teachers. I should note here that disability studies, its own field, largely involves scholarship produced by White scholars and activists. Black disability scholars and activists

(Dunhamn et al., 2015) have attested that, like disability itself, Black disability studies cannot simply be included as a legitimate addition to existing pedagogies. Black disability studies provide (to the experiences of students of color) a pedagogic approach that includes the theory of

Dis/ability Critical Race Theory, or DisCrit. Dis/ability Critical Race Theory accounts for the interdependence of racism and ableism. Disability Studies in Education (DSE) scholars 41

Annamma, Connor and Ferri (2016) and Annamma, Ferri, and Connor (2018) developed DisCrit to view race and disability as the principle of power affecting all aspects of society. DisCrit scholars theorize how “race, racism, dis/ability, and ableism are built into the interactions and institutions of education” (Annamma, Connor, & Ferri, 2013, p. 17) to examine the intersections of different identities that compound marginalization in special education. Directly applicable to this study, DisCrit scholars encourage perspectives using an intersectional lens. Examining intersectionality with DisCrit helps to view the stigma and segregation compounded by multiple identities (Hughes & Talbott, 2017). By making observations through a lens that considers the

ES experience and perspective, a more critical form of research may be undertaken.

Society undervalues both people of color and those with disabilities, including ESs, in their work environments. For example, part of ES students’ identity formation occurs during their school-age years, where learning environments, peers, and teacher interactions affect students’ beliefs and subsequently their graduation rates and career paths. High-school students with disabilities have approximately 20% lower graduation rates than other students, although this can be 80% lower for students with disabilities who identify as Black (Murray & Naranjo,

2008). The National Council on Disability (2012) proposed that the U.S. Department of

Education should ban school districts from encouraging students with disabilities to set goals for only achieving a subminimum wage. Yet, support of this ban has not occurred. Simply stated, students with disabilities in the U.S. experience—to their detriment— educational differences from their typically-abled peers. Concern about the difficulties and injustices that students with disabilities across the US face are also observed in the treatment of teachers with disabilities.

While no one policy in the US specifically targets the ES teacher population, several policies overlap to affect them in different ways. Section 206(d) of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 42

deems it unlawful for employers to pay higher wages and benefits to men than to women who perform equal work. Still, women of color put in twice the amount of effort to achieve half the compensation of White men (DuMonthier, Childers, & Milli, 2017). Women of color hold less- profitable jobs and make less money. While White women have ascended to better-compensated professions, service jobs, such as housekeeping, family caretaking services, nursing, and public- school teaching, that mostly fall to women of color, are among the worst paying sectors in the

U.S. economy (Edmondson Bell & Nkomo, 2003; Jones, 2009).

Disability status in the US further subjects the ES population to earning lower wages than do typically abled citizens. Congress enacted the Fair Labor Standards Act 80 years ago to establish a minimum wage, overtime pay, recordkeeping, and child labor standards. The Fair

Labor Standards Act of 1938 also allows employers to compensate people with disabilities with less money than typically abled workers if the business obtains a 14(c) certificate. The 14(c) certificate bases wages on the percentage by which a person is disabled, indicating that in the

US, people with disabilities are less valuable than workers without a disability. National disability advocates contest the 14(c) certificate and have continued to argue for its abolition on the grounds that it is outdated and discriminatory. Legislation provides subminimum wages for people with disabilities, allowing people with disabilities to live in poverty. The Trump administration reported its plan to continue upholding the 14(c) certificate, as indicated by the appointed Labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, (Congressional Record, 2017). Again, these laws maintain unequal treatment for people with disabilities by affecting their ability to earn a fair income. A report from the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions

(2014) revealed that twice as many citizens with disabilities survive in poverty as those without disabilities. 43

American education researcher, Seymour Sarason (1990), has examined how altering power relationships in classrooms exemplifies the social reform needed in the social and behavioral sciences in education. Sarason’s research revealed how U.S. power structures act within school settings. In its current form, the structure of U.S. education marginalizes the perspectives of students and the efficacy of teachers (Sarason, 1990). Moreover, CRT and Black disability studies scholars, (Bell, 2001; Jarman, 2011), have noted how prevalent attitudes in these same educational spaces formulate a foundation of subtle cultural stigma. Minority group students experience visual, verbal, and nonverbal aggressions in their classrooms (Solórzano,

Ceja, & Yosso, 2000). The aggressions that minority group students experience have led me to reflect on the policies set by the agency with governance over student treatment, which is the

U.S. Department of Education.

A disability advocacy group called the National Council on Disability (2003) advised the

U.S. government on the multicultural make-up of the disability community. The Council also advised program developers to evaluate group culture carefully before initiating any outreach endeavors. Later, during the Obama administration, the U.S. Department of Education acknowledged disparities in the treatment of minority students with disabilities by creating the

Equity in IDEA rule (U.S. Department of Education, 2016). Equity in IDEA rule requires states to standardize how school districts identify, monitor, and serve minority students with disabilities. This rule was planned to go into effect in 2018, but U.S. Secretary of Education

Betsy DeVos placed a two-year delay to study the regulation further. Postponing the time and resources to address disproportionality in serving minority students with disabilities could be considered as violating the rights for students with disabilities as defined by the U.S.

Constitution, possibly clashing with the Americans with Disabilities Act, or ADA, of 1990. The 44

ADA was an amendment from the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA) of 1975, which mandates that public schools accepting federal funds must provide equal access to education. The law holds schools accountable for providing quality education, considered both appropriate and fair, for students with disabilities. Educators have challenged the EHA and the

IDEA (Boyer, 1979; Siegel & Jausovec, 1994). Convincing educators to support the integration of equal access to realize a free and appropriate public education (U.S. Department of Education,

1973) for all students began with disabled student populations receiving recognition as citizens with full and equal rights in the eyes of the law. Soon afterwards, the literature began to reflect how educational policy, law, and CRT applied to classrooms, which include students from underrepresented minority groups (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 2006). ES art students and teachers rely on U.S. educational reform to prohibit schools from discriminating against people with disabilities in all areas of life, including their lives at school. Creating comics to present ES narratives can promote actions to change how schools treat ESs and may change how teachers view education policy by enacting arts education programming. Examinations into students’ experiences can include studying the creative expressions of students’ identities. Teachers can improve their understanding of ES identity (or any intersectional identity) when their curricula ensures the rights of all students. Still, more research on students with multiple minority group identities is needed to determine the best practices and curricula.

The lives of disabled people of color are affected because of their appearances in political and personal praxis (Leonardo & Broderick, 2011; Connor, Ferri, & Annamma, 2016). A dual analysis of race and disability can help in discussing the events in ES art students’ lives in terms of how identity labeling occurs in U.S. education systems. DisCrit has provided me with the means to explore how underrepresentation of people of color, specifically those labeled with 45

special needs, affects U.S. learning environments. DisCrit and Black disability studies as a field has influenced my analysis of the education and civil rights of ES art students, as well as how the unequal treatment of disabled students of color pervades legal discrimination in both U.S. law and popular visual media, such as comics.

Introduction of ES Characters in Comics

Adding to the growing body of knowledge on ES characters, authors, and artists, this dissertation identifies ES characters in the Marvel and DC Comics universe, as well as additional comics publications, with published biographies stating their gender identity, race, and ability status. The focus of analysis is on mainstream comics publications, such as those produced by

Marvel and DC Comics, for several reasons. Throughout U.S. comics history, mainstream comics companies have succeeded in distributing their publications by producing and making available large amounts of their products. Mainstream comics by Marvel and DC Comics dominate the cultural conversation in the US and can be purchased from retail stores, at comics conventions, and online. Alternative comics, or independently produced comics, focus on selling to limited audiences through small print production. Because the readership and sales records of

U.S. independently produced comics are not always publicly reported, statistical information on their creator and reader demographics remain speculative. Therefore, the statistical information in this dissertation reports the author and readership demographics only for mainstream comics companies.

This section centers on how both mainstream and alternative comic book publications demonstrate—or attempt to demonstrate— intersecting identities and ways to represent ES identity. The Marvel and DC Comics characters discussed in this dissertation were produced by creators who do not identify as women of color with disabilities, where each of these 46

components of identity is intersectional and relational. This may remove these creators from the experiences of ESs, depriving the characters of dimension and perspective. Conversely, ES characters from alternative or independently published comics featured in this dissertation were all created by ES comics artists. The comic book produced as part of this dissertation was independently published similar to how other ES comics artists share their creative work.

Visualizing Exceptional Sista Artists

I use the term exceptional sista within the research for this case study and survey study. I created the term ES during the development of this study. The term emerged from multiple conversations with Tiffany (the participant) and Wally (a comics illustrator with a disability).

Tiffany and I use she, her, and hers as pronouns, while Wally uses they, their, and theirs. Glenn

(1995) has identified a gap in appropriate and descriptive terminology for Black women with disabilities, wherein the current term, triple jeopardy, indicates an outdated, ableist expression of identity. According to Glenn, the bearer is in a state of jeopardy, at risk or harm, which situates the person with a negative association instead of a neutral or positive one because “African

American women with disabilities are victims of the impact of a ‘triple jeopardy’ syndrome: race, gender, and disability” (p. 66). Triple jeopardy represents women of color with disabilities in a confusing manner because the term is either applied in multiple fields of sociological and educational study (Rosenfield, 2012) or represents different populations in the same field

(Bowleg, Huang, Brooks, Black, & Burkholder, 2003). Instead of describing women of color with disabilities as having triple jeopardy, the word “exceptional” carries two meanings: it indicates a remarkable quality and it describes people with disabilities within the disability studies community. Harris-Perry (2011) describes “sista” as a variant of the word “sister,” indicating a link to Black diasporic cultures that use the word to acknowledge the kinship among 47

women of color (p. 201). Harris-Perry has defined the collective racial and gendered shaming of

Black women as part of what motivates their politics. Specifically, Harris-Perry examined how the individual efforts underwriting Black women’s collective struggle help to avoid their being silenced by the state or within their own communities (p. 207). According to Harris-Perry, one way to do this is to study Black women’s politics, such as their ideas, beliefs, and attitudes in relation to their society. The ES identity politics studied in this dissertation help scholars redefine the collective knowledge of this population as part of Harris-Perry’s call to action.

Depictions in culture shape the way ESs view themselves. Women of color respond to tropes from popular visual culture, such as the sexualized sinning woman, or Jezebel, the asexual content caregiver, or Mammy, and the emotionally and physically powerful superwoman, or matriarch (Collins, 1990). Harris-Perry (2011) discusses how Black women face specific, damaging, and deeply embedded race and gender stereotypes that make it difficult for them to enjoy accurate recognition in the public sphere. Since stereotyped imagery remains within fine art and propaganda imagery (Farrington, 2005), women of color can be understood as both invisible and hypervisible in society. As members of a stigmatized group, “African American women lack opportunities for accurate, affirming recognition of the self and yet must contend with hypervisibility imposed by their lower social status” (Harris-Perry, 2011, p. 39).

Visually representing ES identity in comics involves addressing how a comic book might visualize ES experience. A way for the comics medium to include disabled bodies and minds of people of color can involve accessing a personal memory and then connecting that memory to a cultural or community memory. Bruce Simon (1997) has argued that Blacks encounter the experience of “rememory” (p. 101), an experience of psychovisual trauma that occurs when an image evokes a response due to a catastrophic event that occurred within a culture. Toni 48

Morrison (1987) used the term rememory in her novel featuring the protagonist, Sethe, who describes a “thought picture” (p. 43) envisioned in her mind. Morrison describes Sethe’s ability to use rememory, allowing readers to experience other people’s memories through visualization.

Morrison’s act of rememory is a way to re-collect, re-assemble, and organize the various discrete and heterogeneous parts into a meaningful, sequential whole (Henderson, 1999). Tiffany and I supply our comic book with personal memories so that comic book readers can visualize our experiences, and personally or culturally relate to our memories from their perspectives. Using comics to depict ES experiences and memories, such as inaccuracies that convey stereotypes, is an effective way to achieve this. Representing an accurate depiction of ES experience is an important step to combat problematic representation so that society can replace prevailing mischaracterizations of ES identity.

Image-Conscious: Discussing Representation in Comics

Owing to limited scholarship concerning ES characters in comics, this study uses a methodology and produced arts-based research that critically analyzes ES representation in comics. Scholarly literature about ES comics characters, while including conversations around

Misty Knight (Rivera, 2007), lacks a critical review of other ES characters. Whaley (2015) investigated Black women’s participation in comics and noted a growing number of Black women becoming producers, viewers, and subjects of sequential art from 1971 to the present.

Unfortunately, Whaley failed to address disabled women of color. My investigation discovered many ES comics characters never before named in research. The authors have identified the race, gender, and ability statuses of these characters, forming criteria by which I classify them as ESs.

The list of ES women characters included in this group totals 17 ES comics superhero and supervillain characters. Superhumans, in comics (i.e., people who possess supernatural or 49

above average skills) (Winston, 1957), deserve a thorough analysis. For reference, their names are: Black Fire (Wolfman & Pérez, 1982), Computo Danielle Foccart (Levitz & Giffen,1982),

Adara Nicole Morisson (Johns & Mahnke, 2010), Black Mariah (Graham, Tuska, & Englehart,

1973), Miranda Mercury (Thomas, 2011), Michelle Neurotap Balters (Nicieza & Daniel, 1993),

Nola Thomas (Gorak & Couceiro, 2009), Sister Miracle (Morrison, 2014), Starlight Stella

Maxwell (McDuffie, Wayne, & Leon, 1994), Venus Dee Milo (Allred & Milligan, 2002), and

Tamika Wildstreak Bowden (DeFalco & Trimpe, 1993). I exclude Marvel Comics’ mutants from the X-Men series from this list. People born with an “x-gene” are considered mutants and possess a genetic trait to develop superhuman powers that manifest during puberty. People with disabilities may sometimes experience mutations in their genetic sequence, but they are not mutants.

Comic books sometimes have themes of social justice, inequality, and racism. To fully consider how comics affect the perceptions of minorities in comics (specifically ESs) in U.S. society, I consider the changing representations of disability, gender, and race that began in the

1960s and 1970s. According to Garland-Thompson (2002), middle-class, White Americans believe themselves capable, responsible stewards when representing people with disabilities through imagery. Marvel and DC Comics published heroes like Misty Knight in 1975 (Figure 3) and the Justice League in 1960 (Figure 5), during the period when civil, women’s, and human rights gained political attention from U.S. government authorities. Public attitudes of the typically abled held, either consciously or subconsciously, unfavorable perceptions of people with disabilities (Gartner & Joe, 1987).

Figure 3. Misty Knight, Marvel Premiere #21, Marvel Comics, 1975. Five comic book panels from Marvel Premiere comics feature Misty Knight in a series of colored images with black text that serve as internal dialogue. The panels feature a silver pistol held by a brown hand with finger on the trigger. The gun is fired, and cans of explosive material start expanding and breaking apart. In the last panel, Misty Knight stares coldly and bites her lip. Panel 1 – Bdam! “and FIRE!” Panel 2 – Misty Knight, first in her class at the academy, B.A. in Criminology at John Jay… Holder of the NYPD Medal of Honor… Panel 3 – A can starts to explode. Panel 4 – “…twice wounded in the line of duty…and forcibly retired after six years service.” “After all, what good is a one-armed lady cop?”

This chapter includes problematic cases of minority representation in superhero comics.

This dissertation opens with the case of Misty Knight, a Black disabled woman who gains superpowers. In the case of the Justice League comic book, issue 36, disabled White male adolescents learn that they can overcome disability by adopting a positive attitude. Privilege, thus, is a state of mind. In the case of Cyborg, a Black male adolescent’s prosthetic limbs are horrifying to him, even though they amplify his power. It is clear that he prefers death over

disability. The comics thus connect minority experiences with emotions of pity, understanding, and acceptance of minority identities. The Justice League of America comics series issue 36

(Figure 4) presents people with disabilities overcoming their disability. This issue furthers an ableist agenda of overcoming disability by hard work or a better attitude. Garland-Thomson

(2005) describes the trope of overcoming disability as an often-used propaganda message that presents selective messages to encourage a limited perception of disabled life. Language and images that produce an emotional response to disabled children instead of a rationale response present disability as a choice or an attitude. Instead of promoting a rational response to disability, issue 36 acts as propaganda by encouraging readers to consider the attitudes of disabled persons instead of the obstacles in society that prevent access to equitable treatment.

The storyline follows Justice League members to a routine hospital visit to cheer up teenage boys with various physical disabilities. The supervillain Brain Storm attacks the Justice

League by afflicting them with blindness, paralysis, and stuttering, among other exceptionalities, while they fight a mutant Batman inside the hospital. All members of the disabled Justice League work together to control Batman and to defeat Brain Storm, and in doing so, encourage the hospitalized teenagers to overcome the adversity of their disabilities. Justice League members return to their typical state of normalcy and sign a contract to treat people with disabilities with respect. This story encourages typically abled people to view disabled people with a sentiment close to condescension, as in a manifestation of courtesy to an inferior (Winston, 1957). Klages

(1999) describes this sentimentality as an opportunity for able-bodied people to see disabled people as afflicted, suffering beings with whom to practice empathy and compassion. Stories that generate wonder and admiration for the person who transcends her/his disabilities create pity for

Figure 4. The Case of the Disabled Justice League, Issue 36, 1965. DC Comics. Image of a comic book panel from Justice League of America #36 features six White children facing and talking to Superman, Batman, Green Arrow, and Martian Manhunter in a hospital bedroom. One boy uses wooden crutches and another wears dark- lensed glasses, while another lays in a bed with his leg elevated. Then… “You sure taught us a lesson! Handicapped people can adjust.” “We’re not going to gripe anymore!” “We’re going to use our handicaps as you used yours – as an incentive to make us even better than we would have been without them!” those who do not. Garland-Thompson (2002) has also explained that typically abled people find staring at disabled people to be socially acceptable when the disabled exhibit a quality of wonder, sentiment, exotica, or realism. Interacting with the teens encourages the Justice League members to develop empathy for all disabled people. Even though the teens will never achieve full normalcy, like the superheroes, they still have a chance to transcend the medicalization of their disabled bodies by using optimism as a cure.

Attempts by DC Comics to endorse a progressive depiction of disabled people’s value did not see racial inclusion until Cyborg joined the Justice League in 1980, when Tales of the

New Teen Titans in 1982 (Figure 5) opened the door for further Black, disabled superheroes like 53

Cyborgirl (Figure 6). Comic books featuring Cyborg generated the majority of U.S. mainstream comics sales in the early 1980s. Sales records for Tales of the New Teen Titans, the publication in which Cyborg most often appears, reveal that this series was ranked fifth out of 100 top selling comics two years after its initial release (Amazing Heroes, 1984). This demonstrates reader’s interest in the internal and external struggles of a Black male superhero, and also indicates how

DC Comics perpetuated disabled Blackness as a tormenting and fascinating condition. Cyborg was known before his accident as Victor Stone, a young man who became badly hurt in a science lab explosion. Cyborg’s father created advanced pieces of prosthetic technology that kept Stone alive and enhanced his abilities. When seeing himself for the first time with fitted prosthetics,

Cyborg panicked, and then resented his father for saving his life.

DC Comics’ Cyborg enacts a form of visual rhetoric that represents Black disability as a tragedy. Disabled people who present as alien or distant often become sensationalized or erotized by typically abled viewers (Garland-Thompson, 2002). Authors facilitate readers’ objectification of Cyborg by having him constantly describe his displeasure with being disabled. Dyson (2004) has stated that the devaluation of Black bodies derives from the focus on Black men and women's flesh in slavery, racism, and exploitation. Since the sale of enslaved Black individuals depended on their physicality (Yancy, 2008), White colonial power involved (and continues to involve) objectifying Black bodies. Cyborg’s internal struggle with his external representation exemplifies how images of Black disabled bodies continue to be viewed as undesirable even when they possess superpowers.

Figure 5. Four panels from The New Teen Titans Issue 1, DC Comics, 1982. Cyborg lies in bed wearing a cold, shining metal gladiator quadroprosthetic outfit. His dark skin contrasts with the bright background and bed sheets. Panel 1 – Cyborg’s father stands over him with a shocked expression. “Victor, I.…” “Just shut up, old man. All my life you’ve used me, forced me to be what you wanted me to be.” Panel 2 – Cyborg grinds his teeth and becomes angry. “And all my life I fought you. But you won, didn’t you?” Panel 3 – Cyborg’s prosthetic arm grips the wrinkled bed sheets. “Curse you, man – I’m exactly what you want now! I hate you, old man, I hate you!” Panel 4 – Cyborg panics and starts to cry and yell frantically. “Damn it, why didn’t you let me just die? Why couldn’t you let me die!?!?”

Figure 6. Cyborgirl, DC Comics, 2002. An image of Cyborgirl from the chest up features her wearing a dark Afro haircut with a tightly fitted headband, a skin-tight, light-colored body suit, and a futuristic shining metal gun prosthetic on her right arm. On the left side of Cyborgirl’s face, her brown skin was cut away, revealing complex eye prosthetic technology with a red eye pupil. “Look down, punk -- -- and say ‘Thank you.’”

To situate Cyborg’s and the reader’s positionality, I explore his narrative through an intersectional lens. Characters who, like Cyborg, directly point out their fascinating impairments, remind readers of the distance between their and the character’s realities. In doing so, the authors invoke prosthetic-wearing Blacks as emotionally vulnerable and sensationalized through their display of non-masculine behavior (Jackson, 2006). Cyborg’s behaviors, such as crying and 56

sadness, occur after he receives his prosthesis. These actions represent Black male disability as a non-masculine state of being, which McGuire, Berhanu, Davis, and Harper (2014) describe as a performance of hegemonic racial and gender norms. Before his accident and amputation, DC

Comics depicted Cyborg as an athletic achiever and popular youth who desires to stand out from other students. He focuses on opportunities to excel in sports while possessing a near-genius intelligence quotient. McGuire et al. have discussed the intersectional positionality of Black masculinity when performing athletic activity and competitive sports, noting that these behaviors are “neither completely disempowered by race nor uniformly privileged by their gender, but often somewhere in between based on their unique positions at the intersection of race and gender” (p. 256). The comic writer’s choice to align Cyborg’s self-image with typical representation of Black masculinity through his acquisition of physical performance rather than intellectual ones perpetuates stereotypes (Gray, 2016). His sadness and crying after becoming disabled enables readers to associate him with vulnerability and non-masculinity. Cyborg uses his surviving quality, his mind, to characterize his former self with his present self, resulting with him wrestling with a double consciousness in a crisis of identity representation, as described in

Du Bois’s (1989/1903) notion of the double consciousness that Blacks experience when living in a White majority culture.

DC Comics approved the publication of Cyborgirl, a character who shares a similar fate to Cyborg, but who chooses a darker path. Also known as LeTonya Charles, Cyborgirl first appeared in DC Comics’ Wonder Woman #179 (2002), where Cyborgirl’s aunt, who worked in a laboratory, reconstructed her using techniques comparable to the technology that rebuilt Victor

Stone. Cyborgirl’s narrative involves stereotypes related to perversions of Black womanhood.

Although Cyborg and Cyborgirl share a similar origin story, Cyborgirl becomes a drug- addicted, anti-social criminal instead of joining a superhero group. Cyborgirl’s defining characteristic involves her desire to return to her former, fully organic self. Her willingness to do whatever it takes to initiate that adjustment back to humanity dominates her narrative. Acting with a devil-may-care attitude, Cyborgirl becomes a villain who carries out criminal offences to serve her self-interests. The controlling images of Blacks, particularly Black women, viewed as obedient and doting or dangerous and deviant (Collins, 2009), positions Cyborgirl as a stereotyped image of bad Black womanhood. DC Comics links Black prosthetic-wearing women to stereotype offences that include drug-abuse, criminal activity, and selfishness.

Another comic book personality that is part of the ES character group is Doctor Mid-

Nite, also written as Doctor Midnight, who is a blind woman of color. The first Doctor Mid-Nite from the DC Comics was featured in All-American Comics #25 (1941); Charles McNider, a

White man and typically abled soldier, lost his sight to a grenade that rendered his daytime vision useless, but he then developed perfect night vision. Equipped with a brilliant physician- mathematician’s mind and outstanding athleticism, McNider became Doctor Mid-Nite, who fought gangsters under an alias in an extensive comic book run. McNider’s blindness was the first exhibition of a physical impairment in U.S. superhero comics, a character trait that continued when Beth Chapel took over as the second Doctor Midnight for McNider in the comic book series Infinity, Inc. (1985). Beth Chapel, a southern Black woman, physician, and trainee at

McNider’s hospital, was involved in an oxygen explosion, and she took McNider’s night vision- enhancing drug to treat her blindness (Figure 7). The addition of infrared vision and the

exclusion of an owl sidekick, Hooty, who assisted the first and third Doctor Midnights by wearing a live-feed camera that streamed video inside the costume’s blackout goggles, made

Beth Chapel a distinct version of the character.

A key difference with Chapel as Dr. Midnight involved a mission undertaken for the U.S. government, during which she dies. Chapel ultimately chooses to make a fatal sacrifice for the survival of her country. Self-sacrificing disabled women, a trope seen in popular visual culture, is one way that disability as part of a comic book character’s identity represents an admirable quality by virtue of giving up living for the betterment of others. Scholars (e.g., Hoffman, 2004;

Schwartz, Lutfiyya, & Hansen, 2005), in examining disabled women’s self-sacrifice in visual culture, have described how disabled woman characters ultimately choose death instead of life.

Schwartz et al. states how the reality of disability is that women “with and without disabilities view and experience the world differently” (p. 15), specific to how their lives are viewed as dispensable by typically abled people. The link between disabled women’s lives being valued as less important to preserve than typically abled lives reflects an ableist narrative written by non- disabled people. Feminist disability scholar Andrea Nicki (2001) has noted that women escaping the role of domestication often enter into another, more lethal, female role of self-sacrifice. Nicki exposes the ableist bias of writers when explaining that women who commit suicide assert that their lives with illness and “the social sources of these illnesses are not worth living” (p. 86). By publishing Chapel’s martyrdom, DC Comics was no longer representing an intelligent, capable,

Black woman superhero with a disability, but instead chose to depict her culminating contribution to the world as her death. Ending Chapel’s run in mainstream comics left a deficit in

ES representation until the appearance of Silhouette Chord in Marvel Comics’ New Warriors

(1990). 59

Figure 7. Doctor Midnight, Infinity, Inc., DC Comics, 1985. Three panels feature Dr. Midnight addressing two men while she lies in a hospital bed. Dr. Midnight’s dark skin is exposed from the back of her hospital gown. A cloth covers her eyes and is wrapped around her head and small, curly black afro. The two men have light skin and wear super hero clothing consisting of capes, a mask, and a hood. The two men express their sympathy for Dr. Midnight’s loss of sight. Dr. Midnight gently touches her forehead as she talks. In the final panel, Dr. Midnight has removed her eye covering to expose white eyes without pupils while throwing both hands into the air as she reveals her new identity. Panel 1 – “Beth, we can’t tell you how sorry we—” “Uh… yes, and my dad.” Panel 2 – “It’s pretty funny, really: promising student spends all her life wanting to be a doctor. Then, in her first year of internship… blooey! Ha ha ha. So how come nobody’s laughing but me?” Panel 3 – “This isn’t the end of your career, Beth, you’re still a doctor…” “Oh, sure! And if a certain vintage user ever retires, I can even take over his business. In which case, you can call me—Dr. Midnight!” Next issue’s crisis cross-cover: The new Hourman and Dr. Midnight!

Two men, Fabian Nicieza, an Argentine-American, and Mark Bagley, a White American, created Silhouette Chord’s character for the Marvel Comics Universe in 1990. Silhouette, a

Black and Cambodian combatant and gymnast, uses two crutches to walk because of her partial paralysis. Silhouette also has supernatural powers, such as becoming nearly invisible while under the cover of darkness and the ability to teleport by using any available shadow as a portal. The outcome of her interdimensional portal-hopping is that she loses her clothing upon reappearing from the shadows (Figure 8). The inclusion of Silhouette notes an important contribution to a small number of ES comic book characters, but the loss of her clothing seems to create more of a spectacle than her stealth abilities would indicate. Her bi-racial heritage and continuous hyper- sexual advances to male characters play into known tropes, in that depictions of women of color are usually exotic, strange, and sexually available anomalies (Collins, 1990). Comic book characters like Silhouette demonstrate how ES characters who are not produced by the population they attempt to represent can lead to misrepresentation. As a result, ES artists have begun challenging mainstream comics publication’s depictions of their identity by creating alternate publications that feature their identity. In this way, ES artists are disrupting misrepresentations of ES comic characters by generating new images within the comics medium.

Comics, a visual narrative art form, leave intentional cognitive spaces for readers to interpret meaning, thus promoting a cognitive freedom unique to comics (Maggio, 2007) and supporting self-interpretation—a democratic practice that empowers individuals to act on their own authority. Comic art offers readers visual narratives that counter dominant popular visual media narratives. If, as Audre Lorde (1983) has explained, “The master’s tools will never

Figure 8. Silhouette, New Warriors #2, Marvel Comics, 1990. Three panels feature Silhouette talking to a man as she smiles slightly and reclines on a bed. Silhouette’s dark skin is exposed through a loose top. Her lower body is covered underneath a bed sheet. Silhouette has spikey black hair styled in a half Mohawk and smiles at the man. The man has dark skin and wears a large sweatshirt, jeans, and black boots. In the second panel, Silhouette disappears, leaving her clothing on the bed. In the last panel, Silhouette reappears without clothing in front of the man. The man looks stunned as he stares at Silhouette, her muscular arms supporting her weight as she presses down on two metal crutches. Panel 1 – “Well, since you’ve already seen the slightly embarrassing after-effects of their usage, I can just show you.” Panel 2 – Silhouette vanishes, her clothes still holding her shape start to fall onto the bed. Panel 3 – “There. I have the ability to assimilate and recorporate myself into and out of any shadow or area of darkness.” Fwoo Thoomp.

dismantle the master’s house” (p. 94), then comics may become the tools for ESs to construct their own realities. The following examples of presenting and representing ES narratives in comic books illustrate how alternative comics do not involve stereotyped ES character tropes such as hypersexuality, violent natures, drug addictions, and feelings of dejection. Instead, counter-stories, such as those told by ES artists, explore themes relevant to the artists as well as the ES community. The radical use of the comics medium to reveal the real experiences of ES 62

artists as comics characters shows how alternative comics publishing differs from mainstream comics’ ES characters.

Re-Presenting Exceptional Sistas in Comics

Women of color with disabilities create comics to tell stories, take control of their own representations, and discuss culture and identity from their perspectives. In Gringa! (Figure 9),

Fajardo (2015) discusses how living and participating in both Latinx and White cultures gave her anxiety about presenting her identity in certain ways. Through metaphoric representation in her character’s outfits and behaviors, Fajardo illustrates a split between her Latinx and American identities, along with the expectations determined by each culture’s norms.

Fajardo appears anxiously standing back-to-back with a version of herself in front of a yin-yang symbol filled with culturally significant objects from each of her cultures. The different selves both feel similar pressures to fit within cultural norms, although in dissimilar ways. The comic transitions into a conversation taking place years later in the next panel, where Fajardo confronts the topic of intersecting identity with current teens. Both panels display an internal struggle juxtaposed with an action the character has taken to remedy the issue. Fajardo explained that her lived experiences inspire her comic art, noting how relating with people who share similar identities took time and caused her to revisit past struggles with identity representation.

Emil Ferris exemplifies the use of metaphor to demonstrate internal struggles externally.

She narrated her journey to becoming a full-grown monster in the bustling and unstable Chicago in the 1960s (Figure 10). Her graphic novel features 10-year-old Karen Reyes, a representation of Ferris’s childhood self who fantasizes that she becomes a wolf-girl. Karen attempts to discover who killed Anka Silverberg, a Holocaust survivor, in an unfolding murder mystery

Figure 9. Two pages from the graphic novel Gringa! by Kat Fajardo, 2015. Two pages from a graphic novel entitled Gringa! painted in grey watercolor and black ink. The left page has a cloudy background entirely stained with grey watercolor. Two figures stand back-to-back in the center of the nothingness with disgruntled facial expressions and hands clasped on their thighs. The left-facing girl wears glasses and a traditional Mexican dress, with her dark hair styled in a braid. The right-facing girl wears black boots and rolled jeans, and she sports lightly dyed hair in a short style. A floating yin-yang symbol depicts traditional Mexican cultural items on one side and traditional American cultural items on the other side. The second page shows the artist typing at a computer to a boy who writes responses to her questions. Left page – In some twisted way, to my friends I was too Latina to be White.… But to my own family I was too gringa to be Latina. In the end, I was still unhappy with myself. So what the hell am I? Right page – Years later I wondered if today’s Latinx youth also dealt with the same troubles as I did. “Yeah in school some kids tell me to speak English, and that I don’t live in America. That I don’t belong in this country, and they’re going to call immigration on me.” “Doesn’t that bother you?” “Yeah, but I ignore them.” “In a way it makes me want to act more Latino.” “I shouldn’t act like someone I’m not just to make ignorant people happy. It’s my culture. I’m proudest to be Latino. It’s your identity!”

Figure 10. Excerpt, My Favorite Thing is Monsters!, Emil Ferris, 2017. A pen and ink page excerpt from My Favorite Thing is Monsters features four panels on a school notebook page. Panel 1 – A half-formed wolf-girl sits on the edge of her bed in her desolate bedroom. Panel 2 – The wolf-girl is shocked when a full moon peers out from behind dark clouds, causing her to brace herself. Panel 3 – The wolf-girl’s transformation continues as she rips her flowery nightgown and grows her leg hair. The toy on her bedroom floor appears shocked, and the comic book on the floor has scared faces on its cover. Panel 4 – A close-up detail of the wolf-girl’s legs shows long claws and boney, animal-like growth in the shape of her legs. “My bones got longer and cracked into new shapes. Just like Larry Talbot in ‘The Wolfman.’ My skin and ligaments [sic] got thick and stretched. My teeth grew out to be finger long and jagged. The nightgown which mama was so proud of finding for a steal–had ripped to shreds. It was a shame because even though I never liked the girly look of the nightie, I knew that mama would be super disappointed [sic] because I hadn’t ‘taken good care of my things.’ Even though they were far away—I could sense that the mob was getting closer and closer. And even though it hurt, I felt happy and threw back my head…”

through current events and flashbacks to happenings in Nazi Germany. The novel depicts a society enthralled by the politics of race and sexual awakening that echo Ferris’ own views, the representation of people who identify as persons of color, women, and persons with disabilities have a bearing on the comics medium.

Summary

To understand better ES identity representation in comics, I identified nearly every ES character in the Marvel and DC Comics universe. An examination of mainstream comics’ publication of

ES characters demonstrates their inaccuracy in representing ES identity, and the resulting implications. Furthermore, I discussed how ES artists who use alternative publishing methods examine their past and employ metaphor to explore internal struggles. These examples of ES identity, based on the artists’ identities and experiences, accurately represent specific lived experiences. I advance the study of ESs in the fields of art education and women's studies in part through creative and imaginative research approaches informed by relationships between feminist, disability studies, and Critical Race Theory that affect ESs. In the next chapter, I discuss arts-based and narrative research methodology that reflect a framework suited for studying the experiences of ES art students and teachers.

CHAPTER 3: A COMICS METHODOLOGY TO FRAME STUDENT-TEACHER ART

PRACTICES

Chapter 3 presents the case study, survey methods, and methodology of the study. I describe how a comics methodology is best suited to this dissertation topic, and discuss the different methods used in the study. I further state the reasons for choosing this methodology over other methodologies. I then explain how the data, data collection, interview methods, survey methods, and study procedure were determined and subsequently completed. The chosen research methods, such as case study interviews, creating a comic book, and surveying readers, were undertaken using a comics methodology and comics method. Comics methodology outlines the specific processes used to elicit a thematic story in a comics method to communicate our personal story in a narrative form. I further describe how I draw from several important principles, such as collaboration, arts-based research, and narrative inquiry, to help produce

Tiffany’s and my narrative.

Thought Bubbles: Inspiration for a Comics Methodology

In this section, I examine ways that a comics method and methodology meet the needs of comics research in art education and women’s studies because making and sharing comic books provide ES art students and teachers with ways to characterize, transform, and communicate their experiences within the ES community. Furthermore, I compare how arts-based research and narrative inquiry combine to frame the comics methodology and method. I relate methodologies similar to comics methodology to justify how creating a new methodology would function, as well as ways of using the methodology are beneficial to this study. In particular, I define and

relate arts-based research and narrative inquiry because they help form comics methodology by establishing a process for creativity and storytelling.

Studies about comics in education represent few women, people of color, and people with disabilities. The following statistics from SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education demonstrate the lack of evidence of ES student and teacher narratives in educational research.

Publishing articles from researchers who cover intersections of comics and education, SANE is one of the few peer-reviewed journals connecting the educational uses of comics in pre-k to post- secondary studies and across a variety of disciplines. Since its inception in 2010, SANE:

Sequential Art Narrative in Education’s six issues have revealed the following:

1) Six out of 41 articles published by women authors specifically wrote about women’s

representation in comics as characters or as authors.

2) One out of 41 articles focused specifically on students with disabilities.

3) One out of 41 articles focused specifically on people of color comics authors.

This look at SANE shows that few women publish research articles about graphic novels or comics in education. Less than 3% of total articles focused on minority group perspectives in comics readership or authorship. While other similar journals may reflect differing data on this topic, the SANE journal specifically represents comics scholarship. Thus, the demographic information from SANE is one journal that signifies the state of researching comics scholarship, but other scholarly forums need review to infer trends within the community of people publishing comics research. New, accurate representation of diversity in comics scholarship can start by employing a new methodology called comics methodology. The following sections explain the need for comics methodology in this dissertation research, elements of comics methodology, and how I employ this methodology in my study. 68

Comics Methodology: Sequencing Student-Teacher Narratives

A comics methodology is a methodology that I created. Graeme Sullivan (2010, p. 100) stated that research practice can take the form of visual and textual art forms. I emphasize the interpretation of art and art making as a collaborative art practitioner by using a comics method.

Sullivan describes arts-based researchers as engaging in creative processes, such as the growth and planning in creating a work of visual art, that lead to discovering crucial insights about their study through critical analysis of processes and product. Using Sullivan’s (2010) reasoning of methodology as principles to explain theory and practice within certain methods (p. 35) helped me understand how comics methodology might describe my use of theory when using a comics method. I created the comics methodology as an appropriate measure to better comprehend and communicate the identity, culture, and qualities of ESs. For reasons described later in this chapter, the format and creative process of the comic book is an appropriate vehicle when using arts-based research practices. In the first step of this process, I co-authored a comic book involving multiple case study interviews to gather Tiffany’s and my personal story. This story developed from interview transcripts. Next, the interview transcripts formed a narrative script to inform the visuals and text in the comic book. The third part of this process involved surveying comics readers about the effects of the comic book. The survey results were studied to understand how Tiffany’s and my story was communicated to the ES art student and teacher population. The narrative formed from the case study interviews lends itself to sharing among many art students and teachers, because the format is accessible to ES art students and teachers, and easy to circulate, view, and review in multiple formats. I use this methodology to supply a case study and survey data as part of my procedure for ES student-teacher input.

Navigating the social strata of educational settings is complicated by identity. Art education scholar Maxine Greene (2001) promoted teacher-learner connections by approaching learning about works of art through hands-on inquiry, questioning, writing, and art making.

Greene’s influence on teacher education is clearest in the ways students and teachers employ strategies when encountering each other that involve imagining and reflecting on experiences.

Comics artist and teacher Bill Ayers (Ayers & Alexander-Tanner, 2010) notes the dynamics of teaching children through comics. Ayers explains that comics have the ability to stimulate teachers and students to be open to learning from one another. Comics can compel teachers and students to participate in artistic practice. Such practices are paired with the comics method to support the production of knowledge. Comics methodology is a system of methods used to understand art students’ and teachers’ equal collaborative creation of comic book arts-based inquiry. By forming comics methodology, I argue for a comics method (visually communicating a personal story among members in a community to support mutual understanding of an experience or belief) as an appropriate method to share Tiffany’s and my narrative of our experiences as an ES art teacher and student. With the comics method, I synthesized elements from arts-based research and narrative inquiry into the comics methodology to study the collaborative, artistic, and social phenomena present in my study.

I considered using decolonial feminist comix methodology, an approach that examines

“women comics creators on their own terms, as professionals and as a community” (Howes,

2014, p. 69). Rhetorician and comics creator Franny Howes created decolonial feminist comix methodology to critique the ethics of alternative comics publications with women authorship.

Howes’ methodology was theorized through White, typically abled feminist rhetoric, focusing on

White women’s knowledge and experience. Narratives about women of color require an 70

approach that includes a conceptual stance that encompasses the perspectives of multiple minority groups. With the goal of inclusivity, I also considered using critical visual methodology for its ability to aid in creating, viewing, and responding to images that inform various cultures.

This methodology might support comic book readers to actively create meaning in images, rather than passively receiving meaning. However, Fiske (1994) and O’Sullivan, Hartley, Saunders,

Montgomery and Fiske (1994) have observed that a reader, or audience, is a “site” for images to form meaning. In these instances, the site of the reader or audience reflects internal interpretations and expels them outwardly into society. Members of a society, in turn, also consume these readings as separate or singular sites for images and meaning. Problems applying this methodology include the rhetoric of describing readers—in the case of my study, comic book readers—as places or sites. Rose (2016) expands this framework by describing it as being developed “based on thinking about visual materials in terms of three sites: the site of production, which is where an image is made; the site of the image itself, which is its visual content; and the site where the image encounters its spectators or users, or what this book will call its audiencing” (p. 19) This methodology favors readers’ experiences as the site or sites for knowledge, rather than seeing both reader and author as responsible for making cultural knowledge. For these reasons, critical visual methodology cannot address the author and reader experiences to the extent necessary within the present study.

While these methodologies share some aspects of comics methodology, they fail to include how multiple creators collaborate to build one story. Comics methodology contributes to the literature around collaborative educational experiences by avoiding assigning tasks to individuals. Instead, collaborators share tasks in a comics method. Cooperative creation, or creating with one another, generates artwork through processes that are different from those of 71

collaborative creation. Education theorist Börje Holmberg (1976, 1995) notes that a cooperative relationship between teacher and learner as part of a communicative education system supports a shared motivation (1986, p. 122) and facilitate in their learning. Expanding from Holmberg’s notion of cooperative communication in education, I argue that students and teachers cooperating in a collaborative creation share in learning experiences. Defined by collaborative learning scholars Hakkarainen, Paavola, Kangas, and Seitamaa-Hakkarainen, (2013), collaborative learning is a peer-interactive process that facilitates an individual’s personal learning, belief revision, and conceptual changes. A comics method allows students and teachers to collaborate more than other methods because the method transforms student and teacher roles from having separate creative authority to equal authority while affecting their individual beliefs. In comics methodology, the reciprocity between alternating authority that each person holds creates a continuum of learner and teacher. Participants employ their unique perspective throughout the process of making a comic book, creating a more collaborative narrative that delivers an understanding of multi-faceted identities.

Comic book and graphic novel artists who focus on student-teacher narratives typically favor the teacher’s perspective. Cuban-American cartoonist and writer Jarod Roselló (2014) recalled his experience drawing alongside Milo, an 11-year-old boy, once a week for six months.

In the comic panels, readers can see Roselló’s thoughts explaining his desire to have Milo draw comics with him. Through narration, Roselló portrays himself pushing to make comics with

Milo. In his dissertation, Roselló explains his realization that meeting with Milo would not result in making comics together, and most notably that “Milo didn’t need me to make comics” (2014, p. 7). Roselló shows the complexity of power dynamics in his teacher-led motivation to make cooperative comics, such as where he notes his authority over making the images, saying “maybe 72

it’s no fun to draw comics when someone is asking you to do it” (2014, p. 5). Although a comic book was created, Roselló did not succeed in cooperatively creating with Milo. Alternatively, in this study, a mutual, collaborative creation helped Tiffany and me create a student and teacher- made comic book. A comics methodology principles mutual collaboration in creating comic book among students and teachers. The comics method as part of the methodology does not portion out tasks among art teacher and student. While power dynamics have constant presence in nearly every hierarchical structure within a social stratum, the elements of ES involve marginalized identities that are underrepresented. However, as demonstrated only too late by

Roselló, these distinct layers can be incomplete, imbalanced, or asymmetrical to a narrative that involves multiple, one-sided characters. Despite similarities with cooperative creation, comics methodology focuses on collaboration through sequential art. Using a comics methodology, this study highlights comics and scholarship where the narratives of students and teachers who are women, people of color, and individuals with disabilities are misrepresented or not present.

Collaborating when using the comics methodology avoids ranking contributions to a comic book. Indeed, comics methodology emphasizes each person’s contribution as an essential part of a larger whole.

Comics methodology equalizes the authority of both teachers and students by distributing power to all collaborators at different points in the process. Special education and disability studies scholar David Connor (2009) studied comics made by students with learning disabilities

(LD) in which the students’ narratives led the study. Connor discussed how three students’ drawings of their personal narratives helped them negotiate stresses brought on by their educational environment. However, a limit of Connor’s study was the representation of race, as the students making comics in the study primarily identify as White. Additionally, Connor did 73

not specify if participating in his course obligated students to make comics for grades. Whether students elected to draw comics for assignment credits or if they received other rewards for participating in the study could have affected how students responded to the task of art making.

Similarly, Tiffany made comics in her high school art course with a comparable goal as Connor: make a comic about a personal experience you want to communicate with others. Connor (2007;

2009) illustrates how disclosing the nature of the student-teacher relationship is important in understanding a student’s incentive to create comics, whereby the comics methodology allows both teachers and students to engage in such inquiry by re-distributing authority to all participants. The importance of disclosing the nature of the student-teacher relationship in understanding a student’s incentive to create comics is evident because of this research, whereas using comics methodology would create an equal power relationship in the comics’ authorship.

Elements of Comics Methodology

In the following sections, I define two methodologies used to form comics methodology: arts-based research and narrative inquiry. I use elements of these methodologies to establish a pattern for my new methodology that, in-part, relies on creative action and delivering a narrative through storytelling. On their own, each research method qualitatively analyzes identity through specific visual characteristics by inspecting social phenomena through the act of storytelling or the artistic process. Comics methodology involves processes of collaborative arts-based narrative inquiry to understand the visual retelling of perspectives.

Arts-Based Research

Arts-based research involves exploring the products of artistic and studio art processes to better understand and predict social phenomena (Barone & Eisner, 2012). A large part of this study employs art making to gain a better understanding of ES identity. Making art allows 74

researchers to gain insight into women’s studies and art education topics visually. Arts-based researchers Barone and Eisner (2011) consider a work of art and research as arts-based when audience members have conversations about socially significant themes and issues, as well as when the artwork stands autonomously esthetically and as a scholarly investigation. Arts-based researchers Bochner and Ellis (2003) have discussed how art education researchers have begun to find that traditional perspectives on inquiry and knowledge are shifting as research-oriented artists question the exclusion of art, performance, and esthetics as knowledge. Bochner and Ellis describe their process as producing stories that emphasize the delivery of a research product.

Readers or viewers of arts-based research engage in a method that is “not something to be received but something to be used; not a conclusion but a turn in a conversation” (Bochner &

Ellis, 2003, p. 507).

Arts-based research can also provide teachers and students with a means to creatively collaborate. According to Knight et al. (2015), arts-based research supports collaborative research processes. In their study on the methodological potential of arts-based research, they investigated the effectiveness of collaborative drawing between teachers and students. Knight et al. drew with students to explore issues of social justice, access, and inclusion in early childhood education. They discovered that arts-based research enabled collaborators to focus on the communication preferences of both children and adult participants, and further promoted the dismantling of the typical power relationship that exists between researchers and students. Arts- based research collaborations can open verbal and visual communication between students and teachers to “raise consciousness of the status of varied ways of being, knowing and belonging”

(Knight et al., 2015, p. 28). Women of color have used arts-based research involving collaboration to explore making art as a means of knowledge dissemination and production. 75

Social science researchers Van Katwyk and Seko (2017) devised an improvised dance to explore the co-construction of knowledge surrounding women and self-injury. Their dance was created and performed by the researchers in front of an audience. Improvisational dancing as research physically engaged researchers with qualitative data, communicated findings with their audience, and helped them assess ways the audience identified with the theme of women’s self-injury. The audience viewed the dance in real time, with Van Katwyk and Seko noting that their arts-based research created a confluence of perspectives that “eventually embrace[d] our own vulnerability as an agent of knowledge co-construction” (p. 43). Arts-based research led to the researchers’ comparing the interpretations of themselves and the audience as collaboratively producing empathetic engagement. Artistic collaboration such as in arts-based research exemplifies how the experience of art making can recognize and measure growth. Collaborative creation in arts-based research holds potential for exploring and producing visual narratives generated by multiple collaborators. Arts-based research can help students and teachers connect through their shared enjoyment of art. The process of addressing socially significant themes can support and sustain

ES student-teacher narratives through the collaborative art making aspects of arts-based research.

Narrative Inquiry

Narrative inquiry is an interdisciplinary, qualitative research that pursues and contextualizes descriptions of the human experience through participants’ personal accounts or stories (Kim, 2016). Narrative inquiry uses the didactic process inherent in many forms of storytelling to frame lived experience as a vehicle for emerging theory and knowledge. This process involves the subjective nature of journals, stories, and conversation as data in qualitative analysis. Researchers use narrative inquiry in educational research to explore the construction and reconstruction of personal and social stories. Narrative inquiry was first used by education 76

researchers Connelly and Clandinin (1990) and Clandinin (2006) who argue that narrative inquiry enables teachers and learners to perform as storytellers and characters in their own as well as others’ stories. Narrative inquiry presents a story through juxtapositions and assemblages of narratives (Meier, 2013). Narrative inquiry researcher Deborah Netolicky (2015) describes using characters in stories as structural, metaphoric literary tools that can communicate research participants’ and researchers’ intangible feelings or experiences. Using characters to co-construct data extends and “develops allegoric layers of meaning while preserving participant anonymity”

(Netolicky, 2015, p. 264). As characters and authors, Tiffany and my collaborative efforts serve as a communication tool for the ES community as well as a research tool. Tiffany and I are the basis for the primary characters in Woven. These personas, named Tiffany and Ms. Perkins, serve as highly developed characters that function as extensions of the plot. Tiffany and my characters generate the actions in the story and are affected by what happens in the narrative. Using the characters to tell the story from our point of view allows readers to empathize with our personas and ultimately with our narrative. According to narrative research methodologist Jeong-Hee Kim

(2016), narrative inquiry embraces diversity in methods, including presenting narrative through comics. Tiffany and I engage ES readers with our narratives, layered as both co-authors and as characters in the comic book.

Narrative inquiry uses stories to elicit readers’ responses. Michael Bamberg, editor of the

Journal Narrative Inquiry, along with narrative inquiry researcher Caroline Demuth (2016), has discussed how small, fragmented stories involving situated practices in everyday interactions act as sites for exploring content that engages researchers. These stories engage researchers in forming insights into character’s identity constructions. Stories, part of a narrative practice, causes readers to participate in the story by investing character’s actions and backstory 77

(Bamberg, 2011). Narrative practices as part of a narrative inquiry aid readers in contextualizing histories, cultures, and the perspectives of individuals by reflecting upon the actions of the stories’ characters. Narrative inquiry used in this dissertation supports ES art teachers and students telling their own stories, specifically enabling Tiffany and I to share/express our perspective on ES identity. I thus developed a new methodology to include narrative inquiry’s support of teachers and learners telling their own stories and eliciting participatory reader responses.

Comics Methodology

Choosing a research methodology is predicated on the research questions this study answers. Comics methodology is the conceptual framework used to explore the specific phenomenon of creating comics. A comics methodology provides a framework for the methods, approach, and research design to this specific comics study about ES art student and teacher narratives. Comics methodology uses mixed qualitative and quantitative methods to triangulate one set of findings with study methods, which include a case study method, comics method, and survey method. This methodology builds on existing theories in women’s studies and art education discourse by employing inductive reasoning to approach creating, sharing, and understanding the effects of a comic book about ES art student and teacher narrative. Student and teacher power dynamics is an inherent aspect of many art education settings and is applicable when considering how using a comics method can affect power relationships between individuals engaged in collaborative art making. Comics methodology, along with an intersectional approach to understanding ES narratives and mixed research methods, fit the nature of the questions I have sought to answer.

Using a Comics Method

Comics method is an arts-based communication tool that visually shares a person’s specific perspective of a community issue with their community through the creation of sequential art (Dicks, 2015; Packalen & Sharma, 2007). Using this method requires community members and researchers to engage with, and thus understand, a culture. Packalen and Sharma

(2007) used a comics method to approach topics of social awareness in a participatory manner.

They developed a “grassroots comics method”, also referred to as comics method, as a communication tool to act as an empowering device for ordinary citizens. In the grassroots comics method, local people and activists share their view of issues in their own communities.

Importantly, the comics remain available for local groups and individuals who normally have limited access to the means to communicate their narratives. The grassroots comics method focuses on the active involvement of community stakeholders throughout the stages of the research process.

Packalen and Sharma (2007) have reported that, despite some strengths, grassroots comics are “not very visible in the media or as a subject of serious study” because they are not widely shared outside of communities (p. 6). Such sharing would allow more people to apply this method of research. A narrative contained within a community cannot address the underrepresentation of that narrative within society at large. By incorporating a readership feedback stage, a comics method can share the content of stories with a larger audience.

Therefore, my use of a comics method includes ES reader survey responses. Creating and widely distributing comics as part of the method’s process generates social awareness. This active involvement includes the identification of and discussion about personal themes, and the utilization of comics to communicate these themes on a community-wide scale. 79

Tiffany and I were once an art student and teacher at the same high school but now relate to each other as educators. We embarked on making comics with similar goals: To explore our past as student and teacher, and to gain a greater understanding of students and teachers who share our identity. In this study, Tiffany and I use the comics method to contextualize and communicate ES experience in an educational setting by creating sequential art to share with other ES community members. Developing from inquiry into the collaborative creation of the comic book Woven (see Appendix), Tiffany and I (Tiffany’s former art teacher and the researcher of this dissertation) shared and reflected upon experiences of teaching and learning in art education. The survey participant responses revealed how readers’ beliefs were affected by the storytelling, depiction of internal dialogue, and themes they encountered by reading the comic book.

Other researchers, such as art education and comics studies scholar Nick Sousanis (2015) and comics researcher Indigo Esmonde (2018), use strategies similar to Packalen and Sharma’s comics method. Sousanis (2015) wrote Unflattening, a dissertation in graphic novel form.

Sousanis uses words and images to reinforce discoveries made about meaning making through sequential art. He suggests the use of co-created comics in research by noting that “Perhaps there’s an ethnography to be done on collaborations in comics” (cit. Brackenbury, 2015). The use of comics method for scholarly work fits with Sousanis’ argument for visually expressing the discoveries in his research as part of an approach scholarship and learning. Indigo Esmonde

(2018) argues that comics can illustrate complex arguments about systems of oppression. In her comic book, Esmonde describes sociocultural theory as a means to specific elements, which included details originating from her memories. A notable example of this is her recollection of

Kindergarten art making. Recalling the memory involves her picturing the scene only to discover 80

Figure 11. Excerpt from Souvenir by Eldrax, Indigo Esmonde, 2018. Two panels are drawn with black watercolor paint and scribbles of crayon. The left border starts as a black helix that transforms into a snake. The snake nearly touches another snake that has a black diamond pattern on its skin. Black hand-written text covers several areas of the panels. The first panel features a simple image of yellow paint, brushes and paper on top of three, square white tables. Black smudged figures stand on either side of each table and engage with the art materials. The second panel features a grey animal wearing black boots, blue eyeglasses, and a dragon tail. The creature stands among red flowers in a green field of grass. Panel 1 – Sometimes I think I have no memories. I try to picture the past. Kindergarten: A large bright room with pale wood tables where we made art. Potato prints. Yellow paint. There must have been other kids there but my memory provides only kid-sized blurs. Panel 2 – In my memories I am alone and I don’t have a body.

that it survives as fragments. Notice in Figure 11 how Esmonde’s partial self-representation, the undefined images of her classmates, and the distinct recollection of objects shows how using singular memory to rebuild a recollection can tell an incomplete story. I find that the selected focus of one person’s perspective can be enhanced by inviting people who were present to recall their understanding of the same event. In this research, Tiffany is a research participant, as well as co-author and collaborator, with whom I recall the teaching and learning that took place in our art classroom nearly one decade ago.

Case Study Interview Data and Procedure

The process for the case study and survey (Figure 12) and the following subsections focus on procedure, development, participants, data collection, and data analysis. Comics often include both image and text elements, both of which are congruous to a single theme, while exploring a progressive narrative. Both the images and the text complement the story’s and the character’s development; Reading the story is as important as reading the visuals. To secure a case study and survey participants, I sought expert guidance about ES identity from former art students, art teachers, and artists who are women of color with disabilities. I also consulted with

Tiffany to create a narrative script to form a comic book story. Wally Shell, who identifies as an

ES illustrator, developed images to accompany the narrative. Wally’s illustrations depict parts of

Tiffany’s and my life. Readers of the comic book are meant to experience parts of our shared experience as closely as they can (although readers may find these experiences different from their own experiences). The survey participants were required to identify as former ES art students, teachers, and artists so that their responses could bring insight into the effect of a comic book representing ES identity.

Tiffany and I used our interview transcript to produce the narrative script by outlining several themes. These themes would be discovered by the readers while reading the story. The themes had literal or metaphoric significance for both Tiffany and me. The themes were illustrated as events that hold mutual or individual significance for the characters.

Figure 12. Comics method process for the case study and survey. Two blue columns and two purple columns stand vertically to represent the flow of the comics method and survey processes. The blue and purple columns have target goals described from beginning (light-tinted goals) that travel down towards the end of each process (dark-shaded goals). Descriptions of actions that took place while completing a target goal are listed next to the goal. These descriptions feature a dashed line to connect and match them with their corresponding target goal. A striped blue arrow connects the last blue target goal with the first purple target goal to illustrate how the comic book was used in both studies. The blue column features six stages that intensify from light blue to dark blue. The purple column features three stages that intensify from light purple to dark purple. 84

Executing the comics method with participants required two studies. Two sets of case study interviews with Tiffany occurred during August 2016 and September 2017. The in-person case study interviews lasted between two and three hours; Audio recordings form the basis of the case study data. The first interview involved establishing how Tiffany and I identify as ES artists

(as former art students, and as former and present art teachers). The secondary interview set involved Tiffany and me probing for more data, starting from where the first interview set ended.

The first interview set includes comments from Tiffany and me regarding our beliefs and recollections of our high school art education experiences and high school identity. The second interview set includes follow-up questions from the first interview along with several themes selected from within the interview responses. Lastly, I documented Tiffany’s process by collecting data throughout the categories of literature review, interviews, and analysis of artworks. The documentation included questions, journal entries, observations, photos, and annotations pertaining to my role as researcher to maintain a reflexive practice within this study.

The case study produced the narrative script and images for the comic book. The survey study gathered ES former art students’ and teachers’ responses after they reviewed the comic book.

Assessment of both studies involved recording unhelpful steps, missing steps, or necessary adjustments. Table 1 presents the research procedures.

Table 1

Research Procedures Organized by Data Source

Case Study Participant Survey Participants

First Comprehensive initial interview Examination of 22 survey responses Interview Set examining one participant and her from potential reviewers reporting their recollection of high-school art age and identity relating to gender, education experiences and high- race, and ability in an online survey. school identity.

Second In-depth interview following Examination of 22 survey responses Interview Set questions from the initial interview from reviewers reporting their beliefs along with selecting themes within on agency, community, and art interview responses. collaborations by ES artists after reading the comic book in an online survey.

Collaborative Comic book narrative script Art as Data transcription revised and edited from six hours of audio recordings visualized with illustrations.

Questions formed from the interview themes include topics of gender, race, and ability, as well as school, family and work life. Tiffany reviewed words and images and evaluated her answers for inclusion or exclusion into the narrative script. Tiffany contributed to the interpretation of the interview data by discussing themes that surfaced, so that each draft of the narrative script was created by both of us to maintain collaboration throughout the script’s creation.

Visual/Audio and Written Document Collection

I gathered information about women artists of color with disabilities, with corresponding data in the form of recordings, transcriptions, responses, and images of artworks created by the women involved in this study. I utilized in-person interviews and online surveys as data- collection tools. Tiffany was able to access, edit, and omit data from the audio recordings and narrative script. This de-centralized me from a position of definitive power for this research.

Comics Design and Development

The case study interviews focus on a comprehensive inquiry of intersections of gender, race, and ability in Tiffany’s former high-school art education, including personalized questions that built upon the first set of interview questions during the secondary interview. To expand upon major themes from the interviews, Tiffany and I clarified the major topics of high school art education. We did this by drafting illustrations from the narrative transcript, as depicted by

Wally Shell. I examined the artworks that both Tiffany and Wally selected to explore subjects intersecting with the themes from the interviews. Exploring these themes helped me detect examples of Tiffany’s and my exploration of ES identity within the words of the narrative script and artwork. In a cooperative process, Tiffany, Wally, and I revised the comic book until we produced a final draft.

Survey Data and Procedure

The survey feedback focuses on an examination of gender, race, and ability from 20 ES women’s beliefs concerning their identity and agency after reading the comic book created by

Tiffany, Wally, and me. The survey questions listed in Table 2 include two general questions about age and identity, followed by 10 questions that ask the survey participants about the comic book. Survey participants had the option to write their reactions and opinions about their reading 87

of the comic book in an open-ended question box at the end of the survey. The data recorded in the open-ended question box was not used in the survey results but was reflected on by the researcher. In their anonymously recorded feedback on the comic book, the 20 ES survey reviewers revealed how the comic book addressed effect that representing ES identities had on this group of survey participants. To describe the observations made in the single case study, I used the survey data to see whether the observable effects of collaborative art making concur with survey responses regarding the comics’ themes.

I used survey data to understand how the comic book was received by survey participants. This allowed me to build a database to assess factors from both studies. This method of inquiry involving a sampling of ES art students and teachers relied on purposeful sampling, which Creswell (2012) characterized as a strategy to identify criteria from which a researcher can acquire data. I surveyed a sample of the disability community, analyzed the survey results, and then used the results to select individuals purposefully to review the comic book. This survey involved collecting, analyzing, and combining quantitative and qualitative data to answer the research questions.

For the survey, participants used a drop-down menu to select the year of their birth, a write-in option to describe how they define their identity, and a multiple-choice selection to answer 10 questions about themes in the comic book. I asked participants to reflect upon their high school art experiences, their beliefs about the ES community, and how they identify their gender, race, and ability. Participants could access surveys on a secure website, Penn State

Qualtrics, and complete their responses within 30 days. The Penn State Qualtrics software helped me to collect and analyze data for research through its design of producing a multiple-choice

survey format, which participants could access via their cell phones or computer. Designing the survey using Qualtrics kept the participant responses private and only accessible to me.

Participants accessed the Qualtrics survey website through a private email, sent by me, with a link to access the survey. Once they clicked on the survey link, participants could answer a set of open-ended questions, multiple-choice questions, and write-in questions. Using initial study data, I asked participants questions about aspects of their exceptionality and how their artistic practice might relate to their beliefs about the comic book.

The first survey data collection period was between April and May 2018 to gather the qualifying information from select participants. The secondary data collection occurred during

June 2018 for the survey study. I collected data from all participants by mail or in person. Survey questions ranged from questions about perceptions of gender, race, and ability to the role of community and their desire to participate in art making practices. The survey questions are listed in Table 2.

Research Participants

The survey participants for this study included 20 ES former art students and art teachers.

I identified potential participants by posting a call for participants on a Facebook group page for women of color with disabilities. From the posting call, 15 individuals responded. Only 10 out of the 15 potential participants from the Facebook group met the requirements to take the survey, because they identified as women of color with disabilities and former art students or art teachers. To select more survey participants, I contacted 10 art teachers and former art students who identify as ES via emails, phone calls, or in-person discussions. After this call, potential participants received documents explaining the scope of the survey and the ways I would document their participation as part of this dissertation. The result of searching and selecting 89

survey participants produced 20 ES former art students and teachers residing in Pennsylvania,

Virginia, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Illinois, and California.

The participants expressed willingness to complete preliminary paperwork to participate in a study in which they would read a comic book and complete an online survey. Survey participants and I exchanged informal and general information about the comic book, the survey process, the requirements to participate, and the risks of participation. I discussed these topics with each potential participant before mailing the hardcopies of the release forms. The release form hardcopies needed to be signed by the potential participant and then returned to me before they could participate in the study. I notified the participants of their rights to stop participation at any time during the study. I mailed envelopes to each potential participant containing a permission form to read, fill out, and mail back, as well as a handwritten thank you letter. The permission form explained the participant’s rights before, during, and after the survey. Lastly, I provided a self-addressed return envelope with postage attached so that participants did not incur any financial burden from participating in the study.

The participating ESs identified as artists, art students, and art teachers. Furthermore, when I shared that the characters in the comic book were an art student and art teacher, many participants responded that they serve or have served in teaching roles, whether in an informal or formal capacity. I informed participants that they needed to share information about race, gender, and ability status because of the nature of the study.

I reported the participants’ societal and cultural identities. The participants reported their residencies, their ability to speak and read English, and their access to technology. The largest demographics were Black and Latina, with 10 and 4 participants respectively. Three women identify as East Asian, and 3 more women identify as multi-racial. Therefore, the dataset includes 90

race- and age-related characteristics. I did not ask participants to report aspects of ES artists’ identities, such as cultural heritage, sexuality, and religious views, since these aspects were not required to participate in the study. I knew some, but not all, of the survey respondents before starting the research. In this way, my identity status as a researcher might have affected the participation of some survey participants, unlike the single case study, which involved one ES artist, Tiffany, with whom I have maintained a familiar relationship for nearly a decade.

Mixed-Methods Benefits and Issues

Data collection took place from 2016 through 2018. Data reports for the case study and survey are independent, with separate records merging results during the analysis. Thus, this is a single-phase study, in which both datasets are of equal importance. By collecting both survey and single case study data on ES former art students’ and teachers’ experiences in high school, I examined inclinations resulting from the quantitative data separately but equally comprehensive quotes, notions, and realizations from the qualitative study.

The survey interpretation of participant responses (PRs) include response bias indicators.

Response bias occurs when research participants see certain research questions or statements as holding negative or positive connotations (Randall & Fernandes, 1991). For example, when a participant selects an answer because of procedural memory (Klaczynski, 2004) or even conflict- avoidant aspects related to gender, as seen in social desirability bias (Fassinger, 1994), this may compromise the findings of the study. After reading Chiavaroli (2017), I included two negatively worded statements to determine if participants selected answers that seem desirable or to avoid conflict. Questions on the effects of reading a comic book on ES former students and teachers included negatively worded questions to indicate the presence of response bias. The statements

asked the participants to determine the most appropriate responses in an attempt to indicate that responses were neither correct nor incorrect.

Limitations of the Data

Data, such as those from complicated or leading questions, could fail to elicit answers that suggest additional information in both studies. For example, a question asking if reading the comic book was a positive experience may lead participants to consider my bias that reading comics was favorable instead of a neutral action. Since participants may incur influence to select answers that align their responses with my bias, negatively worded questions help me consider how answers are selected.

There are limits to using a comics methodology and comics method. Using a comics method could have negatively affected the research study participants and researcher. Dicks

(2015) notes that using the comics method relies on community members’ involvement. Making the comics requires community members to participate at various levels throughout the process, to respect the same point of view, and to have similar outcome goals. According to Dicks, researchers using comics method must instruct and inform participants on the method without determining the actual focus of the comics themselves. If these factors obstruct researchers and participants from using comics to communicate, the comics method may fail to circulate ideas within a community. I monitored how the use of comics method affected the study participants study by observing the way responded to making the comic book and how participants reacted to the comic book’s content. I was prepared to adjust to improve its performance or remove it from the study. Ultimately, I did not change my use of comics method as there were no apparent issues while using it as a method.

The interviews for the case study were limited in the amount of time spent on each because of conflicts between Tiffany’s and my schedules. Time restraints on the interview sessions, along with the gaps of time between interviews, may have impacted the consistency of case study interview data. Stopping and starting from the last interview question, clarifying or reiterating a question, and rephrasing or explaining questions may have further interrupted

Tiffany and my dialogue during the case study. Time may have also affected survey participants since they had limited amounts of response time because of the urgency of collecting feedback while allowing sufficient time for analysis.

Problems with generalizability may arise because of the sample size (Francis et al., 2010;

Mason, 2010) and weaknesses in the case study and survey design. Relying on participants to self-report the effect of reading the comic book and cause issues with data, even with an intention of honest reporting. Art making, in particular making a comic book, is an inherently subjective data source. This dissertation explores art in both objective and subjective manners through case study analysis, and the study design has the potential to highlight what is significant, and potentially contrary to the quantitative dataset.

Summary

I framed the relevance of comics method to comics methodology, and how this study’s use of comics methodology can advance current educational and social theory. As methodology emerging from this study, comics methodology is shaped by theories and frameworks from scholars in art education, women’s studies, and qualitative processes of collecting data. Creating this methodology was a necessity to advance the use of comics method. As I collected data, I described the social phenomena that led me to this line of inquiry, specifically the collaborative nature of Tiffany and my co-authorship. Data and information collected using qualitative 93

research methods were framed by critical theories, methodology, and thought derived from the fields of art education and women’s studies. I outlined the processes and goals used to create a narrative that visually communicated themes about ES identity. Through the documentation of interviews with ES artists, as well as ES comics artwork, I employed the comics method to examine the ways ES art students and teachers experience high-school art classrooms, and how those experiences inform beliefs about gender, race, and ability issues within their artistic practices. I examined participant survey responses for data trends and noted possible limitations for both sets of data. In the next chapter, I describe the research findings from my analysis of the study.

CHAPTER 4: REVEALING THEMES: RESEARCH FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS

This chapter discusses the data analysis by drawing on CRT, Dis/ability Critical Race

Theory, and intersectionality theories to explore how reading the co-authored comic book communicated a personal ES art student and teacher narrative to an ES community. I examine the findings of the mixed methods study to analyze how the methods affected one ES art student and teacher narrative, along with ways the comic book communicated themes in the narrative to

ES community members. The effects of communicating themes in the narrative in Woven with

ES community group members is discussed by discussing the process of making the comic book, student-teacher collaboration during the case study interviews, and themes presented in the comic book’s narrative. Collaboration was an integral action throughout the creation of the study methods; maintaining transparency while conducting interviews with Tiffany, partnering with

Wally to generate images communicating themes in the narrative script, and assessing the survey participant responses were actions analyzed together with the study’s findings. This chapter concludes by discussing the results, addressing missing data and contextualizing the data in terms of the research questions.

Interviews formed the narrative script that Tiffany and I edited, producing themes in the comic book. The themes derived from the narrative script gave direction to the actions and thoughts of the characters in the story. The themes also facilitated the creation of the survey by determining the focus of the questions and statements posed to the ES survey participants.

Twenty former ES art students and teachers responded to the survey. Their participation produced a data set that determined what effects the comic book had on members of the ES population. By surveying ESs who read the comic book, I examined their beliefs and motivations about the themes in the comic book: art making, identity, and community. We also identified sub- 95

themes, such as visibility as part of identity, belonging as part of community, and reflections on educational experiences as part of art making. The survey data demonstrated how reading a comic book about the experiences of one former ES art student and one teacher effectively communicated themes of identity, art making, and community to the ES population. The survey data also demonstrated that ES community members reacted favorably to themes about their identity in the comics medium. The optional open-ended question box responses revealed participants’ beliefs about reading the comic book in their own words generated a positive effect from reading the comic book.

Comics Method Case Study

According to comics author Christy Marx (2012), comics storytelling involves an author communicating and conveying a character’s senses and actions through internal thoughts and external dialogue. Comic books combine symbolism with internal storytelling, or thought processes and emotion, with external storytelling elements like descriptions and dialogue (Marx,

2012, p. xv). Visually distinguishing internal dialogue from external dialogue required the internal and external storytelling elements to juxtapose Tiffany’s character with metaphoric versions of herself, as well as use of flashbacks and flashforwarding through time. The comics method required Tiffany and I to work as a team with Wally, the illustrator of Woven. According to Marx (2012), authors working with a comics artist should collaborate in ways that show how all involved in the making of the comic book are integral and part of a team. The goal of creating images, text, characters, and stories by implementing art making processes in collaboration with

Tiffany and Wally was achieved through the comics method.

Tiffany and I co-authored Woven to visibly express our narrative to an ES art student and teacher community. Tiffany and I created a narrative script from the interview transcription data 96

by coding dialogue in themes. We included reflection and editing in the process so that a refined version of our memories and understanding would be part of the final comic book. Therefore, our exact memories are not featured in the comic book; Rather, the instances that Tiffany and I shared as part of our story in Woven were versions of our memories that best provide a vision of how we experienced the themes of identity, art making, and community.

Comics Method Process

Data collection began when I recorded the audio of two separate interviews with Tiffany in 2016 and 2017. Over the course of several weeks, we discussed memories of her high school experiences, my teaching experiences at our high school, and my high-school art experiences.

The interviews helped me to understand how power shifts changed how and what Tiffany and I learned from each other in the past and present. Starting broadly, I asked Tiffany questions about her life, hobbies, family, school experiences, disability, aspirations, and memories from her high- school years. Then, I responded to Tiffany’s answers with my own memories and annotations, along with further questions to clarify whether some of her answers. Once the two interviews were complete, I began the data analysis by sorting through the dialogue to form a transcript.

Next, I transcribed the interviews for Tiffany and me to edit and to identify themes. After I finished the transcript, Tiffany and I discussed what we had said and whether we should exclude any answers from the transcript. I did not choose to exclude any interview data, while Tiffany chose to omit two of her responses, exercising her authority over personal statements that she deemed private. The two responses to interview questions were stored in study records but are not to be displayed or re-purposed in publications relating to the study. Tiffany’s choice to exclude part of her interview data reflects active involvement in the representation of her identity. 97

I coded the transcript by phrases that created common patterns and relations. The value codes led to themes that included identity, art making, and community. Finally, I interpreted themes in the comics method, and I used them to form a first draft of the narrative script. In the creation of the second draft, Tiffany and I worked alongside Wally Shell to script the panels drawn later. Figure 13 shows collaborative edits to the narrative script from the co-authors and illustrator. The significance of the differing colors in this example indicate how Tiffany, Wally and I agreed upon and selected both the color scheme of each comic book page, the text in each panel, and each page’s overall content. Since Woven shares Tiffany and my memories of our past, the pages are painted using a color scheme aimed to physiologically connect sighted readers to each page, as well as aimed to match non-sighted readers’ descriptions of smells and texture to connect with an image’s color. In Figure 13, cool colors, such as purple, blue, and green, along with warm colors like pink and red reflect the colors ultimately chosen for the first page of the comic book (Figure 13). Working with an analogous color palette evokes sentiment, or nostalgia,

to the narrative script, which later used these colors during the Color Stage of creating the final visual components of Woven.

Figure 13. A screenshot of the narrative script edits from the co-authors and illustrator. The paragraph features colorful text that changes every one or two sentences. Sentence text colors are red, lilac, cornflower blue, purple, and mauve. The second sentence has a green strikethrough line. The text reads – Page 1. We see the light of a new morning. A soft glow on the bedroom where Tiffany is a lump under the bed covers with another small lump next to her. Maybe leave this out because the alarm bit is how most day-in-the-life movies start…too common, ya know? The alarm goes off at 5 AM with her left hand, she smacks the alarm to turn it off (she’s not wearing her prosthetic right arm, and if shown, her partial upper arm ends in a smooth roundness). Getting up Tiffany retucks/covers the hint of her sleeping two-year-old daughter in the bed next to her. Tiffany goes through a morning routine montage of brushing her teeth, with half lit eyes looking in the mirror and toothpaste tube rolled up on the sink. Next panel is a close up that sort of cuts off her face and just shows her attaching the prosthetic right arm with push and click. She is now dressed in her uniform, which is a light blue Polo with a white, long-sleeved shirt underneath and khaki pants. Tiffany is sitting on a step wiggling her foot to get inside her shoe, with her older sister sitting behind her and carefully, (Big sis could say “Hold still, Tiffany/If I’m gonna do this” something to that effect if we should mention her name upfront) and tenderly puts her hair into a ponytail (maybe a nice side view of their faces here) Tiffany heads downstairs to the kitchen. The kitchen table has boxes of cereal on it, but she picks up a piece of fruit/or a pop tart.

Wally’s expertise includes depicting high-school narratives of women and girls of color because of her training as an illustrator. The tools used to create the comics’ images included Adobe

Illustrator, charcoal, ink, pens, pencils, and colored markers. I produced sketches from reference photographs while interviewing Tiffany. These sketches and photos were part of the Pencil Stage.

The Pencil Stage included Wally, Tiffany, and I making decisions about the characters and environments featured in the comic book. From multiple discussions, Wally created drawings for character design from reference photography that Tiffany and I took of ourselves (Figure 14), the layout of the art classroom and various settings (Figure 15), and pencil drawings of Tiffany’s prosthesis drawn from reference (Figure 16). The Pencil Stage permits Tiffany Wally and me to arrange, rearrange, and change the evolving illustrations for comic book panel layouts and text choices. Tiffany, Wally, and I revised character designs and settings multiple times. Figure 14 shows multiple Pencil Stage drawings of Tiffany’s and my character designs. Tiffany and I worked collaboratively with Wally to represent our characters’ outward appearances, especially her and my hair styles, to fit our esthetic preferences.

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Figure 14. Ms. Perkins and Tiffany character design. Two cropped images of gray scale character drawings layer a white background. Sketches of a high school student and a teacher are in various stages of completion, with the word “simpler” next to a drawing of the teacher’s hair. Three photos layer on top of several sketches. The first photo features a light-skinned woman art teacher smiling as she works with a student in her classroom. The second and third photographs show a brown-skinned high-school girl smiling. In one image the girl wears a school uniform and lanyard. The third photograph shows the girl wearing a gold graduation cap and gown while she holds a small child on her hip.

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Figure 16 shows the progression from an initial photograph to my sketch to Wally’s final rendering of Tiffany attaching her prosthetic to her upper arm. During the Pencil Stage, I took a photograph and cropped it to focus on Tiffany’s action with her prosthesis. Next, I used the photograph as a reference to sketch this moment of Tiffany getting ready for school in her morning routine. I shared the photograph and sketch with Tiffany and Wally. Wally drew sketches for further interpretation of this moment. During the Ink Stage, once Tiffany and I approved them, Wally inked the drawings. Lastly, the Color Stage involved Tiffany, Wally, and I deciding which colors would enhance the pages with a connecting flow to the story.

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Figure 15 Classroom environmental design. Grey pencil sketches of art classroom objects scattered across a white background. Objects include a work table and stools, skeins of yarn, a student wearing a large scarf around their neck, hands manipulating yarn, and people seated at two work tables. The words “yarn” and “soft hands” are written near the sketches. Four photographs surround the drawings that serve as visual references for the drawn objects. The photographs include students in school uniforms seated on stools and the floor, wooden work tables, a chalkboard, art posters, cabinets, lighting, podium, and a projector screen.

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Figure 16. Creating a panel that shows Tiffany adjusting her prosthetic. One cropped photograph and three drawings feature a person attaching a prosthetic arm to their upper arm. All panels are cropped, displaying only part of the person’s face and their upper body. Panel 1 – A brown-skinned hand pulling a white Velcro band along a brown plastic prosthetic device. Panel 2 – A black and white sketch of a seated girl in a school uniform. The girl pulls a Velcro strap on the prosthetic arm. The words “click lock” and “tug” are written next to her arm. Panel 3 – A gray scale drawing of a person attaching a prosthetic arm in a t-shirt. The word “click” is written near the sleeve of the shirt. Panel 4 – A colored drawing of a brown-skinned person in a t-shirt adjusting the Velcro strap on their prosthetic arm.

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Tiffany and I used the interview as a conversation about classroom experiences as well as other aspects of our lives. When we discussed her morning routine, Tiffany stated that part of this routine involved attaching her prosthetic with her other hand to her upper arm. We agreed to include this action in the comic book but discussed how wearing a prosthetic would remain only a part of the story. Tiffany allowed me to take a photograph of her putting on her prosthetic.

Using the photograph for initial sketches, I cropped the image using computer editing software to show how Tiffany attached her prosthesis. The comic was illustrated to emphasize the regularity of this action through a protracted number of panels: the routine is simple, non-complicated, and nearly thoughtless. While interviewing Tiffany and observing her at home, I was made aware of this information. While unusual for me, this action barely registered in Tiffany’s consciousness.

Wally retained the close-up photograph and my sketch symbolizing the insignificance of this step of her getting ready for school for accurate translation into Woven. In our interviews,

Tiffany spoke openly about wearing a prosthetic. I felt more anxious about discussing Tiffany attaching her prosthetic than Tiffany apparently did. Although I am confident about not having any particular biases towards people with disabilities, my unfamiliarity with this part of Tiffany’s disability made me acutely aware of my desire to ensure that Tiffany was comfortable. The panel

(Figure 16) presents Tiffany in a way that no other panel does; viewing Tiffany’s action of attaching her prosthetic arm reduces Tiffany to what she adds to her body. Feminist philosopher

Rae Langton (2009) describes how objectification of women can include reducing a person to the identity of their body, body parts, or appearance (p. 228–229). This panel communicates that viewing Tiffany in this way reflected my feelings of intrusion and objectification by photographing her prosthetic.

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Wally depicted the actions of characters with line and text placement. During the Ink Stage,

Tiffany, Wally, and I revised multiple documents to achieve 12 pages of the main story, front and back cover designs, and a bonus scarf-weaving instructions pamphlet. All pages had to support unspoken and spoken dialogue between the characters. The final steps included the color stage, wherein variations of homogeneous color palettes unified the panels. We used sepia, burnt umber, and ochre to communicate impressions of nostalgia. We included descriptive details about the characters’ physical representations, such as skin and hair, clothing, and prosthetics, in the color stage to depict the characters accurately. Wally’s representations were informed by the individuals upon which they were based to accurately and respectfully provide autonomy to their portrayals. A digital, free copy of the comic book is located on Wally’s website. The website page has a version of the comic book for individuals who use assistive technology to hear closed captions.

Comics Method Results

The co-authored comic book addresses Tiffany’s and my attention to developments in our relationship, including shifting power from teacher to student and mutual learning from each other through art making. Notably, Tiffany’s interest in art making developed in our high-school art class with her engagement in a variety of artistic media during her senior year. The comic book reflects the interview themes of identity, art making, and community as part of the experience of being an ES art student or teacher.

Interview data included our aspirations for our futures, our experience of prejudice as

ESs, and how the comic book had the potential to stimulate the imagination of other ES art students and teachers. The interviews provided me with an awareness of teaching Tiffany and her classmates. I realized through this study that I had missed many of the interactions she described 106

that occurred in the classroom. Tiffany communicated surprise when she learned about the effect that our conversation about the scarf-weaving project had on my future teaching, explaining that she never thought I would be deeply affected by this instance. Other parts of our dialogue included sharing similar, but different, experiences as women of color, educators, former art students, and women with disabilities. Participating in semi-structured interview questions with ample dialogue around each answer forged a strong professional and personal understanding between us. This discourse totaled to approximately six hours of audio recordings that was transcribed to create the case study interview transcript.

Theme of Identity

When coding the interview transcript, the data displayed a pattern of dialogue on identity.

For example, our visibility influenced our beliefs about our identities. Tiffany chose to use a pseudonym when we started the case study interview process. Since the case study already used a pseudonym for Tiffany, we retained that name in the comic book for continuity. We discussed experiences about people who focused their attention on parts of our identity, such as attention on disability status, how that made us feel, and how we reacted to the attention. I discussed how there were times when I was teaching and could not hear an art student who asked me a question because of my Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). This caused me to feel insecure about my ability to be a good teacher. I recalled asking students to repeat themselves when I could not hear their voices, which caused me embarrassment, because I assumed students would think I was not listening to them. I admitted that, after several years of teaching, I started telling students within the first few days of school that I have APD that affects my ability to hear them, instead of not telling them at all. Disclosing that I have APD helped students to understand that when I asked

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them to repeat their question, it was because I truly could not hear them and not because I was not listening.

Similarly, Tiffany explained how small children are often interested in her prosthetic arm.

Their curiosity results in obvious stares that do not upset Tiffany. This sentiment changes when adults stare at Tiffany’s prosthetic; she feels their actions are insulting, because they should know better than to stare, and that they should engage in a conversation with her if they have questions. The comic book used Tiffany’s internal dialogue of invisibility and hypervisibility to depict two different experiences of visibility. Tiffany’s invisible and hypervisible personas illustrated this part of the story in Figure 17. Tiffany grows to represent her hypervisible experience on public transportation, which contrasts with the classroom scene, in which she becomes nearly invisible. The comic illustrates Tiffany’s internal dialogue to communicate visibility as a crucial aspect of ES identity. The process of creating a caricature version of Tiffany and me embodied the norms from the society in which our comic book was produced. Comic book caricatures are used in Woven to convey authenticity of the events in our story to the reader.

In this way, personal metaphors are reflected through Tiffany and my caricatures so to closely mirror ourselves.

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Figure 17. Hypervisibility and invisibility, Woven, 2018.. The two panels featured on this page are painted with creamy oranges, pinks, and leathery browns. Panel 1 – Hypervisible Tiffany is nervously sweating, touching her prosthetic arm with her right hand as regular-sized people look at her. Tiffany thinks, “Some days, I feel hypervisible.” Panel 2 – Invisible Tiffany moves past a group of talking teenagers like vapor, with no indication her presence was noticed by anyone. She thinks, “And other days, I’m the opposite.”

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Figure 18. Ms. Perkins passing the skein of yarn, Woven, 2018.

Visible identity was also communicated when representing Wally in the comic book. As the illustrator of Woven, Wally’s influence on the character design and story was weighted as equally important to Tiffany’s and my influence on the narrative script. Tiffany, Wally, and I agreed that representing each other in Woven was important to indicate our equal contribution to the creation of the comic book. Wally was represented by two animals, a cat and a dog, in the comic book. The presence of a cat and dog are seen on the first page of Woven with the inclusion of pet food bowls near the staircase in Tiffany’s house (Figure 21). Later in the comic, on pages

12 and 13 (Figures 32 and 33), the cat and dog are incorporated as part of Tiffany’s family and community by Tiffany showing affection towards them. This concept of community is further

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discussed in the comic on page 13 (Figure 33) through advice written by the cat and the dog, as well as discussed in a later subsection of this chapter.

Figure 19. Finding your crew, Woven, 2018.

Theme of Art Making

The data revealed a collection of responses about art making. For example, Tiffany and I were able to learn from each other as researcher and participant by using the comics method to examine ways the narrative script told our story about past and current art we had made. We conversed about art project assignments that resulted in positive and negative reactions, why we enjoyed teaching and learning those lessons, and how we wanted to proceed with making art in the future. Tiffany recalled her dislike for drawing in general, how the self-portrait drawing and

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still-life drawing assignments were not enjoyable to her, because she did not feel confident in drawing compared to other artists, which affected how she made art after high school.

Further dialogue stimulated an examination of why art class was enjoyable for Tiffany and me.

In Woven, a key moment of tension communicated how I, as the teacher, held unequal power in the art class. A power shift occurred, however, when I asked Tiffany to teach me how to instruct her in the upcoming scarf weaving lesson.

Timing in comic book panels, or sequencing, is what comics scholar Scott McCloud

(1993, p. 104) describes as the reader’s eyes moving along the comic book pages to comprehend and make sense of future or past tense within the surrounding panels. McCloud (p. 67) has discussed enacting closure to mentally construct a continuous, unified reality. Pages six through nine (Figure 21, 22, 23, 24) depict this moment through a series of panels in which timing from one image to the next is drawn and written as moment-to-moment. During our conversation about this instance, Tiffany and I shared a fond recollection of how our shared desire to create art was the reason why the shift in power from teacher to student occurred. Without Tiffany’s motivation to participate in art making, she would have not taken the art class. Tiffany was motivated to make the scarf and was thus willing to assist her teacher in understanding how she could successfully participate in the project. Figure 18 shows Ms. Perkins passing the skein of yarn to Tiffany to symbolize the shift in dialogue from teacher to student. The art making theme shows Ms. Perkins stepping back from the authoritative role of knowledge-giver to knowledge- receiver; Tiffany instructing her teacher on how to teach the lesson is a change made possible in part because of the way both women value art making. The action shown in the comic book effectively communicated how expressing creativity is a main characteristic of ES art student and teacher behaviors. 112

Theme of Community

Community was the third theme that emerged from the interview data. Positive responses to the ES community appeared in the case study through dialogue about family, friends, and seeing ESs throughout our lives. We discussed people who had made an impact on us through their actions. Tiffany and I identified several adult role models who provided guidance through difficult times; Tiffany greatly esteemed family members who supplied daycare services for her daughter, and specifically mentioned her aunt and older sister as two women who both see and love her for who she is. Outside of her family, Tiffany expressed admiration for the many women with disabilities she met through her career as a security guard. As patting down women was part of her security duties when working at a concert venue, she noticed women who wore prosthetics to concerts without covering them. This caused Tiffany to question whether she should start exposing her prosthetic arm more often. I asked Tiffany if she desired to converse with other ESs on a more regular basis than while working at concerts. She replied that she would like to be in contact with other women with disabilities, but she was not aware of any existing local groups.

I theorize about the ES community by focusing on two essential ontologies that disability studies scholar Gareth Williams (2001) outlines as: the lived body and the everyday relationships between the disabled person and others. The lived body (O’Neill, 1985) helps to explain how bodies and identities correlate. According to Williams (2001, p. 129), disability status can bring focus on a disabled persons’ body. I theorize that exploring how ESs define their own situations, label their identity, and organize as a community group is relational to ES societal experiences.

The ES group members also ascribed to multiple identities, which disability scholar Dan

Goodley (2013) describes is part of his observations in critically examining disability studies.

Goodley states that moving away from “fixed identity categories and realizing community 113

membership through rich diverse connections” (p. 641) is needed to effectively study disability groups. My discussion of disability communities involved input from people within the ES community group. I found that many ESs shared similar experiences of exclusion, marginalization, and oppression through this study.

Discussion about belonging and connecting with community based on disability identity can be seen in Figure 19, a panel featuring the comic book’s main characters talking directly to readers about finding a crew, i.e., a community of people who work together in support of each other. The ES identity, as characterized by the protagonists in Woven, is exemplified through the act of a small community finding belonging and connection. In the comic book, dialogue breaks through the fourth wall on page 13 (Figure 33) in an effort to engage ES readers in conversation with the first steps toward finding or acknowledging their own crew. Tiffany discusses her thoughts about her abilities despite what others think of her, and Ms. Perkins asks if readers recognize a variety of disabilities, while Wally offers further advice about creative expression and community. The comics method directs readers to assess their own community connections.

This dialogue about the theme of community conveys how a sense of belonging affects ES beliefs and motivations.

Comics Method Discussion

The first phase of the comics method involved preparing for the case study, a task that required determining if Tiffany wanted to be interviewed as a case study participant, along with permission to create a narrative script from the audio recordings from the interview sessions.

Additionally, Tiffany and I asked Wally to illustrate the comic book after several discussions describing the aim of co-authoring a comic book reflecting ES art student and teacher identity.

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Once Tiffany, Wally, and I agreed on how we would proceed to create the comic book together, I proceeded with my next step: conducting multiple interviews with Tiffany.

I found certain questions in need of clarification in the first interview, and therefore, I rephrased questions when necessary. I attempted to state clearly and plainly what I wanted to know about Tiffany’s perspective on her art education experiences. Adjusting what questions were asked changed the way Tiffany responded. Her answers became specific and detailed, which caused me to reply to her response with directly related follow-up dialogue. For instance, when I posed a question about her greatest success or frustration, the resulting exchange revealed that I needed to clarify my inquiry, which caused Tiffany to respond with a specific experience to answer my broad question:

Veronica: What do you feel has been the most important success in your life or what’s

been the biggest frustration?

Tiffany: Like when I want to do something with my arm and then I can’t?

Veronica: Like what can’t you do? I don’t know what you can’t do, because it seems like

everything I think of and have asked you can do.

Tiffany: I can’t do my hair. Like, if I just wanna put it up in a ponytail, I have to wait for

my sister.

Veronica: Okay, fair enough, didn’t think about that.

Dialogue like the above shows the conversational interview style that developed during the first interview and continued through the second interview. This example of our narrative shows how Tiffany and I described our perceived limitations relating to our cultural expectations.

For instance, I shared my beliefs about Tiffany’s capabilities by stating that she was a capable person. In my understanding of her lived experience, Tiffany was capable of performing any task 115

that I could do. Once I disclosed this belief, Tiffany was able to correct my assumption, albeit a positive one, about her abilities.

The second interview session proceeded in a similar manner. Our conversation started with the last unanswered question from our previous interview session, and it continued until

Tiffany had answered all the questions. I transcribed the data and removed any parts of the dialogue that Tiffany did not want as part of our narrative script. Wally provided feedback about the parts of the script that could fit on a standard comic book page. Wally, Tiffany, and I discussed our decisions on the topics of character illustration, themes, and symbolic visualization of both inner and outer dialogue. Designing the characters involved researching how readers would perceive personality, motivation, back story, and conflict (Nieminen, 2017). The comic book character design incorporated Tiffany’s, Wally’s, and my input in illustration choices to depict facets of Tiffany’s and my characters’ archetypes. Deciding how Tiffany and my characters actions, interactions, and thoughts prompted our consideration of ways the narrative would present themes obtained from reviewing the interview transcript: identity, art making, and community.

Themes directed actions and interactions in the comic book storyline, leading towards a resolution to the narrative. The identity theme incorporated a symbolic visualization of inner dialogue, such as in panels featuring Tiffany’s character turning into hyper visible Tiffany and invisible Tiffany. The art making theme included panels featuring symbolic visualization of outer dialogue, as seen when Ms. Perkins sits next to Tiffany, so she can speak while passing her the skein of yarn. The shift in power is visible when Ms. Perkins passes the yarn to Tiffany. Another shift featured in the comic book involves the written narrative. After the skein of yarn is passed from Ms. Perkins to Tiffany, the reader can read the internal dialogue Tiffany has throughout the 116

rest of her day. This counter-storytelling technique displays Tiffany’s memories and thoughts in the subsequent panels, demonstrating one way she had authority over her dialogue in the story.

Comics theorist Scott McCloud (1993) describes how two panels interact with the space in between, often called the gutter, which becomes an active part of the image. For example, the first page of the comic book (see Appendix for pages showing the comic book created from the case study interview data), features the first and second panels jumping approximately a minute in time sequence, whereas the second, third, and fourth panels on page 12 (Figure 32) jump a sequence of days.

Page 11 (Figure 31) jumps to Tiffany’s memories, allowing the reader to understand that the events happened in the past, but not in an order that would change the interpretation of the storyline. McCloud says that the gutter “takes two separate images and transforms them into a single idea” (p. 66). The gutters assist in identifying moments by leading the reader to connect action and time, thus creating feelings of immediacy. For example, Tiffany’s character felt underserved in her gym classroom because of the teacher’s insensitivity to language about a two- handed basketball training exercise. Tiffany’s character was spoken about but not spoken to on the morning bus ride by the mother and child who both stared at her prosthetic arm. Lastly,

Tiffany’s character felt validated in the art classroom because of Ms. Perkins’ acknowledgment that Tiffany knew the best way to accomplish the upcoming art project. The panels depict a shortened time sequence, with the action changing from panel to panel, emphasizing some events and deemphasizing others. Visual narratives refer to at least two separated moments, where the nature of a reader’s mental activity is represented in the structure of images and their sequences

(Carrier, 2000). Using this premise of visual storytelling, Tiffany, Wally, and I sequenced the

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panels and gutters to intentionally speed up or slow down time, directing readers to our emotional memories as well as the actual interactions that surfaced in the interviews.

The comic book medium brought visual and verbal tension through the sequence of timing between comic panels (Hatfield, 2005). In this way, Woven communicated Tiffany and my personal experiences to readers through the story as well as through storytelling techniques that comics provide. An example of this is seen on page 1 (Figure 21) where the comics timing between panels decentralizes attention on Tiffany’s prosthesis. The fourth panel on page 1 shows

Tiffany during her morning routine, which includes attaching her prosthetic forearm and hand on her upper arm. From Tiffany’s perspective, this daily action took very little “time”, held very little importance to her routine, and should not be the subject of much attention.

Comparatively, Tiffany’s experiences where she felt hyper visible (Figure 17) had transpired in a similar length of time but seemed to occur over a longer period. Panels visually communicated this timing by featuring a moment-to-moment sequencing of character action, emphasizing importance of the interactions taking place among the panels. The concept of subjective timing between panels was purposely manipulated by the co-authors and illustrator to affect readers' shared experience when engaging with the story. Specifically, the situations where Tiffany’s character communicated embarrassment or worry about embarrassment or worry differed greatly from timing during enjoyable activities or mundane actions. Employing comics to bring attention to or away from actions through timing between panels was a part of how the medium communicated specific personal experiences to readers.

Comics Method Conclusion

Weaving our stories caused Tiffany and I to understand our experiences as art student and teacher within a new narrative that included different complexities from our pasts. Art education 118

scholar Judith Burton (2016) observed the act of weaving come to mind when thinking about networks of art education theory and practice. Weaving, or braiding, (Sullivan, 2005), describe a process in which visual art research projects are involved. Weaving or braiding produces a new form by measured and harmonious connections. The process to weave Tiffany and my story together involved understanding our individual school day, followed by seeing where our experience overlapped and merged. In this exploration of our days, the dialogue uncovered that art class was one of many interactions where Tiffany faced experiences relating to her identity.

Therefore, Tiffany’s interaction with Ms. Perkins holds importance to the comic book storyline but does not dominate the overall narrative. Co-authored decisions to prioritize Tiffany’s daily story demonstrate a shift in storytelling authority and a critical, learner-centered focus emerging from Tiffany’s and my interview conversations. Investigating our memories, motivations, and beliefs influenced my opinions of exceptional sistahood, enabling me to investigate how the artistic collaboration addresses hierarchies within comics discourses related to gender, race, and ability status.

Survey Method

An important part of my research involved visually communicating experiences with former art students and teachers. I explored how Tiffany’s and my experiences affected ES former art students and teachers by surveying a group of participants who identified as women of color with disabilities. The goal was to determine whether ESs who did not participate in making the comic book would have an effect on their beliefs and motivations regarding the three themes of identity, art making, and community after reading the comic book. The data demonstrated that reading Woven affected ES survey participants’ beliefs and motivations about the three themes featured in the comic book. The ES participants first read the comic book and then responded to 119

the statements about their beliefs and motivations. Each statement related to the themes of identity, art making, and community. The ES survey participants rated their beliefs and motivations with positive, neutral, or negative responses on a Likert-type scale (Lubke &

Muthén, 2004; Sullivan & Artino, 2013). I organized the survey study results in detailed percentage charts to display their significance (Cramer & Howitt, 2004), and I arranged them in tables based on the rating scale and response rates. The survey findings verified that the comics method affected a group of 20 ES former art students and teachers and that reading the comic book influenced their beliefs and motivations, thus affecting their overall positive responses to the themes in the narrative.

Survey Method Process

The ES population who provided PRs resided across the United States. Therefore, I collected all PRs remotely through an online survey. The survey size totaled 20 participants, based on the need to procure enough PRs to generate a response with a low margin of error. I assessed the PRs to determine how reading the comic book influenced the participant group. I used a Likert-type scale that correlated with statements that discussed comic book themes.

Participants selected “definitely agree” or “like a great deal” if the comic book influenced their beliefs or motivations positively. They selected “definitely disagree” or “dislike a great deal” if it influenced their beliefs or motivations positively. The rating scale included a neutral answer of

“not sure” or “neither agree nor disagree.” This response indicated that a participant rated their beliefs or motivations as not changing or indifferent towards themes in the comic book.

Using a survey method helped me understand the ways in which a comic book containing an ES narrative affects the ES community. I correctly believed the comic book would be able to communicate the themes that surfaced in the transcripts, and thus have a positive influence on ES 120

art student and teacher lives. The survey results documented any change in belief and motivation about identity, art making, or community. I wanted to know whether ES participants’ beliefs or motivations changed for the better, for the worse, or not at all, so I combined measures of efficacy with measures of emotional valence. When participants rated their answers as “strongly disagree” or “dislike a great deal,” reading the comic book had a negative effect. If participants rated their answers as “not sure” or “neither like nor dislike,” the effect was neutral. If participants rated their answers as “agree,” “like,” or higher, the comic book had a positive effect.

The units of analysis in this study were the survey evaluations. I posted the survey evaluations on the university’s website (www.pennstate.qualtrics.com), and they were available to selected participants who preregistered to read and provide survey feedback. The individual participants obtained secure website links to the comic book and to the survey website before taking the survey. The surveys were available for participants to complete for 30 days. In total, I collected 23 survey evaluations representing the ratings provided by individual ES artists who responded to and completed the survey within 30 days of reading the comic book. In total, 27 individual participant surveys went out, yielding 23 completed surveys. I only analyzed 20 of the

23 completed survey data sets because of three participants indicating that they were women of color, but that they did not consider themselves as having a disability.

Table 2 presents the individual statements on the survey forms. I counted responses to each statement as 5% of the total response rate; Thus, 20 responses totaled 100%. I assessed the effectiveness of the comic book against a norm-referenced report to determine whether survey participants responded with more positive or more negative answers than neutral answers. I compared the norm-referenced survey answers with the participant response means. I calculated 121

the mean ratings across all 13 items from all 20 survey evaluations. The survey evaluations included responses from two other statements not featured in Table 2, which asked participants to identify their birth year, and an optional text box that provided a space for participants to type a response about their opinions or thoughts about the comic book.

Table 2

Survey Statements or Questions, Mean Ratings, and Standard Deviations

Category Theme # Question or Statement Mean Std. Dev.

Qualifier n/a 1. Do you identify as a woman of color with 1 0 a disability?

Qualifier n/a 2. Did you read the comic book entitled 1 0 Woven that Veronica Hicks and Alesha Nichols co-authored?

Belief Identity 3. I like how the co-authors of Woven are 1.15 0.36 women of color with disabilities who created the comic book based on their experiences and about their identities.

Belief Identity 4. I like how the comic book depicted 1.15 0.36 women and girls of color who have disabilities.

Belief Identity 5. My own past and personal experiences 1.75 0.62 relate to the events illustrated in the comic book.

Belief Identity 6. The comic book reminds me of similar 2.20 1.12 experiences I had as a high-school student.

(Table continued)

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Category Theme # Question or Statement Mean Std. Dev.

Belief Community 7. The comic book reflects how I see 1.35 0.48 struggles and successes experienced by women of color with disabilities.

Belief Identity 8. The comic book did not reflect how I see 4.20 1.06 myself, and I did not relate to the story.

Belief Community 9. The comic book advocates for the women 1.40 0.49 of color with disabilities community to be proudly visible and unified.

Effect/ Community 10. The comic book motivates me to be 1.05 0.22 Motivation active within the women of color with disabilities community.

Effect/ Art making 11. After reading the comic book, I do not 4.55 0.80 Motivation want to express my identity or personal experiences through art.

Effect/ Art making 12. After reading the comic book, I would 1.35 0.57 Motivation describe my feelings about making art and collaborating with other women of color with disabilities as:

Effect/ Community 13. After reading the comic book, I would 1.10 0.30 Motivation describe my feelings about advocating or representing the women of color with disabilities community as:

Overall mean and standard deviation ratings (across all items) 1.78 0.49

Survey Method Results

Table 2 shows the theme, number order, statement or question, mean rating, and standard deviation for each category, as well as the overall mean and standard deviation rating. I 123

calculated ratings for questions and statements from the average mean and standard deviation across individual and overall questions or statements. Item mean ratings ranged from 1 to 4.55, with standard deviations ranging from 0 to 1.12. The overall mean survey rating was 1.78, with a standard deviation of 0.49. This low standard deviation indicates that ES participants’ answers were, on average, like one another. The overall mean confirmed the similarity in answers, showing that the group of ES former art students and teachers provided similar feedback on the effect of the comic book. Additionally, I calculated the standard deviation to hypothesize how the survey responses would deviate if I administered the survey to a larger ES population. Since the overall standard deviation indicated the margin for error, I estimated that giving the same statements to a larger ES population might produce similar results. As a whole, effects reported by ES participants were generally positive towards themes of identity, art making, and community after reading the comic book.

Table 3 presents the distribution of responses on the effects of reading the comic book as an ES former art student or teacher. Tables 4 and 5 display the distribution of responses on the effects of reading the comic book on the specific themes of community and art making. The response options were different from those in the statements in Table 3, and there were two additional answer options for seven available answer selections altogether. The statements focused more on the theme of identity and less on art making and community.

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Table 3

Response Rates to Belief and Motivation Statements

Strongly like/ Like/a Not Strongly dislike/ Statement Dislike/disagree strongly agree gree sure strongly disagree a) I like how the co-authors of Woven are women of color with disabilities who created the comic book based on their experiences and about their identities. 85% 15% 0% 0% 0%

b) I like how the comic book depicted women and girls of color who have disabilities. 85% 15% 0% 0% 0% c) My own past and personal experiences relate to the events illustrated in the comic book. 35% 55% 10% 0% 0% d) The comic book reminds me of similar experiences I had as a high-school student. 25% 55% 0% 15% 5% e) The comic book reflects how I see the struggles and 65% 35% 0% 0% 0% successes experienced by women of color with disabilities. (Table continued)

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Strongly like/ Like/a Not Strongly dislike/ Statement Dislike/disagree strongly agree gree sure strongly disagree f) The comic book did not reflect how I see myself, and I did not relate to the story. 0% 15% 0% 30% 55% g) The comic book motivates me to be active within the women of color with disabilities community. 60% 40% 0% 0% 0% h) The comic book advocates for the women of color with disabilities community to be proudly visible and 95% 5% 0% 0% 0% unified. i) After reading the comic book, I do not want to express my identity or personal experiences through 0% 5% 5% 20% 70% art.

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Table 4

Response Rates to Statement on the Effect of Comic Book and Art Making

Extremely Moderately Slightly Not Slightly Moderately Extremely Statement important important important sure important important important

j) After reading the comic book, I would describe my feelings about making art and collaborating with 70% 25% 5% 0% 0% 0% 0% other women of color with disabilities as:

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Table 5

Response Rates to Statement on the Effect of Comic Book and ES Community

Extremely Moderately Slightly Not Slightly Moderately Extremely Statement positive positive positive sure negative negative negative

k) After reading the comic book, I would describe my feelings about advocating or representing the women of 90% 10% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% color with disabilities community as:

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The distribution of overall response ratings for the statements highlights that (a) the distributions of ratings were positively distributed the value towards themes overall, (b) the distributions of the ratings differed subtly in questions and statements focused on specific themes, and (c) nearly all ES participants indicated that reading the comic book affected their motivations or beliefs about the themes of identity, art making, and community. The PRs from the survey data showed how beliefs and motivations related to ES identity affected the participants. However, the impact of the comic book varied depending on the criteria of the statements. Motivation to participate in the ES community rated either as generally “agreeable” or “positive” by all 20 ES former art students and teachers. These results provide evidence that using a comics methodology affects ES former art students and teachers; More specifically, it has a positive influence on the themes of identity, art making, and community.

Survey Method Discussion

To ensure that the survey questions aligned with the comic book, I created statements for the survey that emerged from the case study. I was in frequent communication with the research participants about their individual accommodations to take the survey. Support for participants’ differing abilities included allowing for a long survey response period of 30 days and multiple survey-taking techniques, such as providing a save feature for the survey so that the participants had optimal opportunities to respond in a manner convenient to them.

I compared PRs to negatively worded statements with PRs to positively worded statements to see if I had been successful in reducing response bias. For example, statement (i) and statement (j) share the theme of art making, so comparing the results of those statements could indicate response bias. When some participants answered, “strongly like” or “strongly agree” to statement (i) in Table 2, which is a negatively worded statement, I compared these PRs

against responses to statement (j) in Table 3, which is a positively worded statement. Checking for response bias by wording some statements negatively and some positively on the same theme, I was able to identify any fluctuation in PRs on the topic of art making.

To discuss this part of the PRs, I examined the standard deviation and discovered high variability in the mean on the theme of art making. The survey revealed that reading the comic book engendered mostly positive responses to art making. Moreover, after reading the comic book, participants reported a range of effects, with some PRs showing little effect on their motivation to make art, while others reported a strong motivation toward art making. I discovered that the theme of making art was prominent in the comics method data. This theme was also a subject that strongly to moderately affected survey participants after reading Woven.

Therefore, there is a parallel between the way the survey participants responded to the art making theme and Tiffany’s and my interview data that value coded art making.

I discovered several concerns while conversing with ES survey participants before administering the survey about the amount of time it would take to complete the survey.

Experiencing fatigue while completing the survey could cause participants to leave some questions unanswered. To combat survey fatigue, I kept the number of statements and questions low and added more variation in response choice. Having multiple options to choose from when responding to a statement can prevent obtaining insufficient responses (Choi & Pak, 2005).

Participants chose from five response options in statements (a) through (i), whereas in statements

(j) and (k) participants chose from seven response options. To compare whether listing more choices or fewer choices affected distribution ratings, I ensured that statement (h) and statement

(k) focused on the theme of community but had different numbers of response options.

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Overall, statements with five options and those with seven options that focused on the same theme had similar PRs. Statements that supplied additional choices for a more specific response resulted in slight differences in the distribution of PRs. My conclusions on ES participants’ beliefs and motivations about the theme of community reflect the fact that the PRs were primarily positive with little variation, despite having more response options. Adding more answer options to the survey helped me to discover that reading the comic book had a positive effect on the community. Reading the comic book particularly affected participants who exhibited a high motivation to represent the ES community. Participants’ beliefs about the ES community were positive after they read the comic book. The comics method was one way to affect the ES community through representation in popular visual media. While community was not the most frequently discussed theme, it rated as highly important, and it had positive implications for the survey participants. Therefore, I deduced that the way in which survey participants responded to the community theme affirmed its value within the comic book. The significance of the effects of the comics book was not fully apparent in some data, however. For instance, most PRs provided a range of significant findings, but, in two instances, the participants responded neutrally to the statements I posed. This occurred in statements (c) and (i). Neutral responses indicated that some participants were unsure whether the comic book influenced them.

The open-ended question box created a space for feedback on the comic book that was controlled by the survey participants. In total, 10 out of 20 survey participants volunteered to write feedback for me to read about their experience with Woven. The 10 responses varied in length, from the shortest response at 21 words, and the longest response at a 428 word count. The average word count for all responses was 88 words; the average response involved sharing the participant’s positive reaction to the comic book and relating the story to their own lived

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experiences. The entire list of responses to the open-ended question box are not reprinted in this dissertation because of personal identifiers present in the responses of certain individual participants. Instead, I selected several responses to reprint in chapter 5 because they featured commentary directly relating to the answering of this study’s research questions.

Survey Method Conclusions

The data demonstrated how reading the comic book affected participants’ beliefs and their motivations to participate in the women of color with disabilities community. I tried to reduce the opportunity for response bias by including measures to detect and account for any possible biases by wording some statements negatively and some positively on the same theme.

It was my belief that PRs could unsuccessfully measure the effect of reading the comic book if participants were certain that answering unfavorably might damage the success of the comic book. This possibility could also occur because I had multiple correspondences with each survey participant. The survey response rating distribution shows that the comic book was effective as there was a positive response to the three themes. The survey showed that participants, overall, reported that the comic book influenced them.

Attitudes of Participants

The three themes I identified in the data analysis of both studies resulted in positive attitudes towards participating in and representing ES former art students and teachers.

Motivation to participate in the studies relied on participants’ personal attitudes towards contributing to the studies. A factor as to why the ES participants chose to partake in this study was because of their personal investment on the topic of ES identity. Several research participants who were acquaintances of disabled women of color, and with whom I am familiar, contacted me. They had seen my posting on the Divas with Disabilities web page advertising that

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a comic book about exceptional sistahood art education experiences was available to read and to receive feedback. Personal attitudes about their identity and their community compelled them to reach out to contribute in the study. The results of both studies showed that participants exhibited overall positive attitudes towards the topic of ES identity. Attitudes about the expectation of treatment by the researcher and research institution varied among participants. Some ES participants contacted me multiple times to discuss how I would handle their data during and after the study. For instance, several participants wanted me to use their real names as signifiers in the study, instead of using a pseudonym. In other cases, two participants asked me not to publish their personal information because of their own privacy concerns. Despite these variations, all participants volunteered to be available over the course of 30 days to take the survey. In general, participant attitudes reflected a commitment to sharing their beliefs with others so that more contributions to ES identity research could emerge. Commitment to representing exceptional sistahood was a motivating factor in the choice to participate.

Research Limitations

Several limitations in the research include my familiarity with the research participants and the high amount of correspondence between the participants and myself. Both studies involved participants with whom I had substantial connections outside of the research relationships. Friends, colleagues, mentors, and acquaintances volunteered their time to participate. Tiffany, a past student, early childhood educator, and acquaintance, volunteered to participate in this study knowing my research agenda of learning more about ES art student and teacher experiences. Therefore, my familiarity with Tiffany’s experiences and my own experience as an ES may reflect a representation of exceptional sisterhood different from what other ES community members have experienced. It is also possible that if I had spent as much

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time conversing with the survey participants as I did with Tiffany to make the comic book, the survey results might have reflected differently.

In addition to maintaining familiar relationships with the research participants, I also spent a great deal of time communicating with them about the data collection procedures. My acute awareness of the amount of dialogue and correspondence between the participants and myself for the survey included my availability to explain parts of the study through phone calls, in-person conversations, emails, and physical mail. Time spent corresponding with each potential participant included my writing and sending them no less than five e-mails, two physically mailed envelopes, one physically mailed follow-up thank-you postcard, and several phone calls and texts. As a result, I felt the need to carefully evaluate the quality and quantity of my communication, so as to satisfy each participant’s concerns and needs. The time spent on a volunteer study for 20 participants became a nearly overwhelming endeavor, but I maintained positive relationships with each participant.

Problems with the Study Design, Data Collection, and Analysis

Some features of the study design may have affected the type and quality of the findings.

One feature of how the study was designed to generate high quality data was my decision to create audio recordings rather than other types of recordings. Tiffany was interested in using audio recordings rather than, for example, video recordings, because she felt less pressure to look or present herself in a different way. The audio recordings allowed us to be relaxed about our appearances during the interview sessions. Not having video recordings as part of the data sets may have limited the analytical possibilities of the narrative. With video recordings, however, the study data would have included a secondary source that could verify some of my observational data, such as non-verbal communication or other kinds of gestures. Video recording could further

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add to the study by obtaining visual communication information that could not be collected reliably through researcher observations alone. Visual communication might include the animation in participants’ voices, physical movements, and the ability for others to view the interview data. For example, while Wally was able to depict Tiffany attaching her prosthesis using photographs, a video recording may have been additionally informative to understand the movements of her forearm and hand.

The study design for the comics method only involved one K-12 art teacher (me) and one former art student (Tiffany). However, using other art teachers and students as references in creating the art student and art teacher characters could make them more relatable to a larger audience. In future research on ES teacher identity, I would collaborate to find possible implications of testing character creation with other K-12 art teachers and students. Through this research on ES identity, I return to my argument that comic book authorship and readership can examine social structures within educational institutions’ policy and actions.

The study design for the survey method involved 20 past and present art students and teachers who identified as members of the ES community. Surveying the participants after they read the comic book may have produced little change in future actions. For example, the survey could have included questions about ES participants who made art or who participated in the ES community after reading the comic book rather than merely being motivated to do so. These surveyed ES community members were also a sample of the larger community group. The larger

ES community may report an effect on beliefs different from those of the sample population after reading Woven.

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Summary

Making and sharing a comic book that communicated the themes of identity, art making, and community with the ES population involved conducting interviews to produce themes that were depicted in the comic book. The themes gave direction to the actions and thoughts of the characters in the story and facilitated the creation of the survey. The study participants (ES former art students and teachers) responded to a survey to determine the effects reading a comic book about ES identity on an ES population. I examined beliefs and motivations about the themes in the comic book, such as visibility as part of identity, belonging as part of community, and reflections on educational experiences as part of art making.

The survey data indicates that the comic book effectively communicated the themes to the ES population and that ES community members reacted favorably to them. The data exhibits a correlation between reading the comic book about ES identity and positive attitudes among the surveyed ES community members. The data analysis reveals how the case study and survey, which differed in regard to the method employed, occurred at different times, and involved different research participants, could produce correlating results. Tiffany and I discussed the making of art as extremely important during our case study interviews. A majority of the survey respondents (70%) viewed art making as extremely important in their lives. Other respondents viewed art making as moderately important (25%) and as slightly important (5%), with no respondents indicating lack of importance or neutrality. Data from both studies indicated how ES art students and teachers favorably viewed participating in and representing the ES community.

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CHAPTER 5: CROSSOVERS IN A MULTIVERSE: CONCLUSIONS AND IMPACT ON

THE FIELD

The goal of this dissertation was to examine whether the beliefs of ES art students and teachers were influenced by a comic book about one ES art student’s and teacher’s experiences.

This dissertation began arguing that ESs experience disadvantages due to ableism, racism, and sexism in U.S. society. Reforming the societal structures that impede upon ESs’ art education involves presenting an account of experience that counters oppressive, dominant narratives with accurate representation of ES identity. This study documented the processes between collaborators who share a student-teacher relationship by observing Woven’s coherent visual narrative. The comic book communicated a personal gendered, racial, and disability narrative of one ES art student and teacher, and subsequently affected an ES art student–teacher community.

The research questions were: “In what way did making a comic book impact the narratives of one ES art student and one teacher? How did making a comic book communicate themes from an

ES art student and teacher narrative to the ES community?” The following chapters investigated factors controlling ES student-teacher responses to communicating Tiffany’s and my personal story in the comic book:

Chapter one stated the problem and described it within context of art education and women’s studies discourse. The structure of the research methods was described to illustrate their use in both fields of study. After specifying the research goals, I approached research that involved visually communicating the dialogue from a single case study of one ES student and teacher by making and sharing a comic book with an ES community group. The discussion of comic book readership, authorship, and character identity justified why comics were the opportune site for visually communicating a personal story with ES art students and teachers.

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Chapter two presented a literature review that connected the cultural and historical background of the representations of ESs in comics publications. The literature provided examples of ES comics characters, gaining a critical understanding of their presentation in the medium. This literature review, which included both scholarly literature, mainstream comics, and alternative published comics, was conducted to establish a theoretical understanding of previous research on representing minority identities in comics. Conducting the literature review provided what previous scholarship discovered about ES art students and teachers, verified my assumptions about ES characters in comics, and identified and employed research methods to be used in the study.

Chapter three explored the rationale for methodology and research design. Upon reviewing the literature on researching comics as a method, I determined that a comics methodology supports the specific student-teacher collaborative comics research of this dissertation. I outlined methodologies that influenced the creation of comics methodology and described the case study and survey sampling employed in this study.

Chapter four presented and interpreted the data and results obtained from the study methods. I used the results from the study to refine my initial research questions. Results from the case study and the survey correlated despite a difference in research methods.

Here in chapter five, I summarize the research and conclusions drawn from the findings and answers to the research questions. This chapter also discusses recommendations for further research, implications for art education and women’s studies, and future policy on the art education of ESs. I culminate the inference of this dissertation in both fields by discussing the impact of researching and representing ES art student and teacher identity in comics.

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I initially recognized the impetus of the study to involve my experience as an art teacher instructing Tiffany, an ES art student. This led to an examination of comics effectively communicating this specific experience with the broader ES community. Woven communicated

Tiffany’s and my story with ES community members, who identified the themes as resonating with their own experiences as art students, teachers, and women of color with disabilities. I maintain my argument that making and sharing personal ES experiences through a comic book is effective in communicating those experiences with the ES community because of ES community group members indicating their beliefs were affected by Woven’s themes.

While the use of comics as an educational research method continues to develop through published scholarship, its usage in the humanities remains unconventional. Considerable outcomes from this dissertation include one emergent methodology (i.e., comics methodology), along with a critical review of ES characters published in mainstream comics literature. The methods used in this study included a qualitative method and a comics method. The study also featured a quantitative method, in which a group of 20 ES art students and teachers were surveyed. Overall, the theories, participants, methods, results, and study conditions affected the changes made to this dissertation.

Research Question 1

The first research question regarding how a comic book impacted the narratives of one

ES art student and one teacher was answered by using the comics method. Making a comic book affected Tiffany’s and my narrative, and also visually communicated with the case study interview data with the ES community. To communicate our story, the narrative script (created from the interview data) was studied for frequent expressions, words, and topics in the dialogue transcription. Words such as identity, community, and making art were identified as having a

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repeated presence in both interview transcripts. These topics thus became themes in the comic book. Tiffany, Wally, and I visually communicated these themes using comic book elements of communication, such as metaphor, multidimensional views, sequencing and closure.

The use of metaphor, an approach to narrating self-identity (Bamberg, 2011), informed my incorporation of narrative inquiry into comics methodology. Creating Woven with visual- textual narration became an interactive process for Tiffany, Wally, and me. Presenting the narrative through comics appropriately focused telling the story through image-text combinations, an aspect that was partially responsible for my situating a comics methodology as an encounter with simultaneous first and second-person comics collaboration.

Multidimensional views—as part of unflattening (Sousanis, 2015) static, one dimensional ways to derive meaning—moved this study away from using only images or text to denote action. As an arts-based research method, making the comic book resulted in graphically expressive presentations made possible by the process of unflattening multiple perspectives of the story line. Multidimensional views of the same experience, as Tiffany and I described them, were communicated through combining two stories (student-teacher) with two forms of communicating ideas (image-text). Thus, the view of being an ES student was layered with multiple dialogues. These dialogues provided a rich understanding of an art classroom experience because of their intersecting perspective of the same incidence.

Research Question 2

In regard to the second research question, the comic book communicated themes from

Tiffany’s and my narrative through the components of the comics method. Using a comics method provided Tiffany, Wally, and me with a means to visually communicate themes metaphorically, via unflattening.

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Hypervisibility and Invisibility. In Woven, hyper visible Tiffany and invisible Tiffany represented the internal struggles that were communicated during the case study (see Figure 24,

25). This metaphoric representation of her inner conflict connected with ES survey participants, who noted visibility and invisibility as an enduring theme from the comic book. The narrative script of Woven enacted unflattening transcript dialogue through use of color and non-textual communication. Wally, Tiffany, and I collaboratively unflattened the story by simultaneously forming the image-text combinations to communicate ideas, as well as combined two stories of

ES student and teacher experience in the pencil stage of comic book development. Unflattening the multiple perspectives brought dimension to Tiffany’s character that communicated both our views of character interactions and thoughts. On page eight (Figure 28), the first panel illustrates layers of Tiffany’s thoughts that are represented as invisible and hyper visible versions of

Tiffany. Tiffany’s self-awareness was represented in moments when her ES status felt either obtrusive and unseen. Viewing Tiffany’s internal thoughts along with Ms. Perkins’ external dialogue balances their presence in the panel, a signal to our collaborative process in making the comic book. In seeing words and reading images as part of multidimensional viewing, Tiffany,

Wally, and I connected parts of our individual experiences as ESs to reflect one story.

Sequencing and Closure. Tiffany, Wally, and I used comics storytelling techniques, such as sequencing and tension, to communicate themes to readers. The themes were communicated through Woven’s sequencing, as seen in panels with moment-to-moment timing to indicate urgency. For example, page 11 (Figure 31) relays the passage of several hours of Tiffany’s school day, where Tiffany’s morning sequence (Figure 21) illustrates moment-to-moment actions of waking up, her hygiene procedure, putting on her prosthesis, and grooming routine. While the sequencing for these moments spans differing quantities of time, they detail actions through

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literary and visual devices such as the flow of color across panels and pages to show the passage of time throughout the day. The panels switch side-by-side between Ms. Perkins’ and Tiffany’s faces to indicate their moment-to-moment exchange of dialogue. The pacing of Woven varies in timing to communicate tension to readers. The student-teacher and collegial relationships between Tiffany and I aided in bringing closure, a technique used in comics where authors create gaps within panel sequence and timing, so readers could bridge gaps and make inferences from the content.

Community. Themes of community were communicated through flashbacks focused on positive sentiments towards ESs with whom Tiffany had connected with in solidarity. The large leaps in time highlighted these significant memories of connecting to Tiffany’s community of individuals that share a similar identity. Although Tiffany’s memories did not follow the comics’ overall sequencing, they focused attention on connecting with ESs as part of a community. In

Woven, Tiffany interacts with her crew, or members of her ES community. Revealed in context on page 11 (Figure 31) and directly addressed on page 14 (Figure 34), shows that Tiffany and

Ms. Perkins connect their sense of belonging to a larger, extended ES community. Tiffany identifies with women who are disabled women of color by observing their navigation through life. Tiffany remarks “girls like [her] working… on a date… or at a concert…” in Figure 32.

Tiffany’s family, friends, and neighbors are another crew that she identifies as part of her ES community. While these members may identify as typically-abled, or with identities other than

ES, they are present for Tiffany in ways that she feels support her, demonstrating this support through their actions. For these reasons, Tiffany feels she has “got people in [her] corner” (Figure

31). Consistent with my argument, the theme of community was communicated to the readers of

Woven as elaborated in the survey section of this summation.

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Art Making. The sequencing the theme of art making in the narrative brought unified closure to the comic book. For example, the title of the comic book, Woven (Figure 20), is written in script made from yarn connected to the scarf on the table. The scarf is held by both

Ms. Perkins and Tiffany to indicate their connection to the story and each other. The scarf relates to the art project discussed by Tiffany and Ms. Perkins on pages seven through nine (Figures 26–

29). The scarf weaving project was discussed by Tiffany and Ms. Perkins inside the art classroom, one of two places Tiffany’s character participates in extensive external dialogue with other characters in the comic book. Conversely, Tiffany lets her internal feelings speak for her when taking part in activities outside school, such as embarrassment on the public bus ride, as well as in school, as seen through Tiffany’s frustration in her gym class. Through these instances,

Tiffany is able to achieve reification in school and outside of school, specifically seen in the art classroom and at her home. Shown in Tiffany’s exchanges with Ms. Perkins, Tiffany responds positively to an art making invitation by her art teacher. Tiffany’s confidence and desire to make the scarf project in her own way demonstrates that the art classroom is a place where Tiffany feels authority. The ability to create and fabricate in a form of best arts practice, where Tiffany identifies her own needs and requirements, reinforces this authority. Extending out of the classroom and into her home, Tiffany passed on the lesson of confidence through art making to her daughter by sharing the scarf weaving in the final pages of the story. This action closed with the pattern of art making and sharing in the ES community with the next generation. By making this comic book, Tiffany and my story communicated themes from our case study data to the ES survey participants. Because comics apply multidimensional views, metaphor, sequencing and closure, survey responses indicated the medium as effective at communicating an ES story with the ES community.

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The Survey. Participant survey responses communicated that themes present through the comic book were connected by the comics’ content to the readers. Data obtained during the survey was studied to understand the effect of retelling an ES art student-teacher narrative to the

ES community. The data showed that surveyed individuals consistently rated themes of ES identity representation, importance of art making, and participating within the ES community with high or moderate importance. For example, the following quotation was written by a survey participant at the end of the survey in the open-ended question box that was optional for participants to complete. This quote from one participant response offered insight to the participant’s thoughts about her experience reading and reviewing the comic book:

“As a woman of color with a disability, I saw a lot of my own experiences in the comic.

However, as a woman of color, I can also see how aspects of my everyday life, excluding my disability, are also affected by discrimination. I was doubly empowered by the message in this comic.”

The survey data correlates with this participant quote, with participant responses towards the theme of identity. When asked to rate the statement “My own past and personal experiences relate to the events illustrated in the comic book”, 35% of participants strongly agreed, 55% generally agreed, and 10% were unsure about the relatability of Woven to their own experiences.

None of the participants indicated that they disagreed or strongly disagreed with the statement.

This shows that Woven may feature one ES art student’s and teacher’s exact experiences in education, but still generally relates or strongly relates with surveyed ES community members.

Survey participants revealed beliefs about the importance of the co-authors’ sharing the identity they represented in the comic book. The theme of identity was a focus for five questions posed to survey participants. Survey responses indicated that the comic book affected ES art

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student and teacher beliefs about their identity. The survey statement “I like how the comic book depicted women and girls of color who have disabilities” produced an 85% response rate of strong agreement, with 15% of participant moderate agreement. None of the survey participants was unsure about their response to the statement, and no participants strongly disagreed or moderately disagreed with the statement. One survey participant wrote the following response at the end of her survey in the open-ended question box, noting how her memories were activated by seeing and relating to Tiffany’s identity in Woven:

“I really like this comic. I wish it was longer because I want to get more involved with these characters and see more about Tiffany and her teacher's artworks. I like how Tiffany's family is in the comic, that was a part I could relate to. I feel like when I was growing up, my family life was a different world from that of my school life. So, putting that part in the comic was really important. I hope there is a sequel because I think I want to see more about how learning to stand up for yourself carries into being an adult. That is something that would be helpful to me to think about now with my own disabilities.”

This participant’s survey response correlated with other participant responses that indicated an increased motivation to see ES identity represented in more comics. Some survey participants responded that Woven should become a comic book series. Participant responses demonstrated the importance of achieving accurate representation of ES identity. For example, the digital copy of Woven has been visited over 100 times since its release in June 2018. I plan to investigate the impact of the art student-teacher collaboration in Woven through further inspection of website visits and communication with survey participants well after the conclusion of this dissertation. Art educators, women of color, and ESs who were not part of the study contacted me after reading Woven by emailing me their thoughts and comments. Readers reacted

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to Tiffany and me representing our identities in comics, stimulating conversation between ESs about accurate representation and classroom communities benefitting from the findings of this research. I responded to each email communication, which was followed by discourse about topics of ES identity, ES advocacy, and visibility of ESs in media. Conversations that took place after the survey concluded shows participants were affected by Woven; they wanted to continue conversing about ES representation with the authors and illustrator. The comic book functioned as a site for the creators’ ideas to come together, where the comics’ content supplies readers with an experience from which to form new ideas.

Findings and Conclusions

As a result of this study, I found making the comic book Woven had affected the ways

Tiffany and my narrative was shared with the ES community members. Telling our story in a comic book caused ES community members to discuss Tiffany and my experiences. The community members, Tiffany, and I shared commonalities, such as in situations where ESs’ feel invisible or hypervisibility. Even though ES survey participants did not live the exact scenarios illustrated in Woven, I found that their survey responses showed an imagined emotional connection, or empathy, related to the depiction of ES characters. I compared the findings with the studies outlined in the chapter 2 literature review, specifically, that using intersectionality can examine ES identity, and does not privilege one aspect of intersecting identities over another

(Vernon, 1996). Studying ES identity with counter-storytelling co-constructed a space for contesting, re-imagining, and reclaiming stories about the lives of minority groups (Vasudevan,

2004). Tiffany’s and my narrative introduced members of the ES community to ways comics accurately represented their identity. Claims made in the reviewed literature, such as 84.5% of comic book creators are White, typically abled men (Hanley, 2018) indicated the

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disproportionate authorship of ES stories in comics. To examine ES identity without privileging one identity above others, I employed an intersectional lens. Intersectionality helped illuminate ways structures of oppression intersect for ESs. To view racism in societal structures, such as in the U.S. education system, I used CRT to study ways minority group identities are influenced by stereotypes in comics. To understand how racism and ableism intersect, I explored Dis/ability

Critical Race Theory as part of Black disability studies to contextualize ways education is experienced by ES art students and teachers. Using these theories provided me with a basis to compare my findings. I conclude that ES identity experiences need more accurate representation in comics to subvert misrepresentations of the ES community. The results described in chapter 4 are present in the findings outlined in the following subsections.

Finding 1

The first research question focuses the ways making a comic book impacted the narratives of one ES art student and teacher. Findings based on the qualitative data from the case study interviews indicate that making a comic book had an effect on Tiffany’s and my ES narrative. Without a comics method, the multidimensional views of Tiffany and Ms. Perkins participating in the weaving lesson would not communicate the tension in the moment-to- moment dialogue between student and teacher. Ms. Perkins may have been able to surmise what

Tiffany was feeling and experiencing as a student to some degree because she is an ES, but this account would come from a teacher’s perspective. The story needed to be told from the perspective of Tiffany so that she could provide her specific understanding of ES experience in the narrative.

A significant variable that indicated the impact making a comic book had on forming the narrative was discovered through an analysis of the data. My memory and experience as

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Tiffany’s former teacher and a member of the ES community lent itself to providing a script that is responsive to the many storytelling elements and topics the comic book addresses, such as how an art teacher works with a student to improve her pedagogy. The narrative script used in the comic book generated a discussion between Tiffany, Wally, and me. Wally, as an ES, contributed their expertise in the visually portrayals of ES experience in Woven. In the same way Tiffany and my ES experience constructed a basis for the script of the comic book, Wally contributed to the comic book by influencing how memories of being an ES art student were shared. In this way,

Woven was not only an object of Tiffany’s and my culture as ESs, but shared Wally’s experiences as well. Analysis of our collaboration revealed ways the comics method helped communicate an identity and experiences from that identity through words and visuals. As described in chapter 4, discussions about the narrative script involved determining that the comic book would visually communicate identity, art making, and community though art-text combinations. The comics method visually communicated these three themes through the use of metaphor (Bamberg &

Demuth, 2016), multidimensional views (Sousanis, 2015), as well as sequencing and closure

(McCloud, 1993). A survey participant wrote the following comment at the end of her survey in the open-ended question box to describe her beliefs towards the visibility and invisibility of ES art students experience that were activated by the artwork viewed in Woven:

“I think the visibility of women of color with disabilities is super important. When it is exhibited through art, it is easier to express. People can just take it as they may and hopefully gain a better understanding of how they can relate to the story.”

This participant’s survey response related to the theme of identity expressed through the storytelling of the comics medium. Comic books’ ability to use visual metaphor as a narrative tool aided in this reader’s attention to ES presence in society.

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During the conclusion of the comic book (Figure 33), Tiffany describes love, belief, success, and teaching are aspects of her affirmations for life. For Tiffany, this fortifies her as a woman, as a person of color, and as a disabled person. These affirmations intersect on the page but are separated by different panels. The ES identity has been attributed as a stigmatized identity (Vernon, 1999) that is often experienced simultaneously and singularly depending on the context. This how the comic book indicates separate and simultaneous experiences occur internally and externally for Tiffany. The images and the text captions Tiffany’s thoughts while providing readers with advice open for interpretation.

Finding 2

The finding from the survey indicates that the comic book successfully communicated

Tiffany’s and my ES narrative to the ES community. This correlates with the second research question, which asks how making a comic book communicates themes from an ES art student and teacher narrative to the ES community. The theme of art making was communicated in the case study interview data. The case study interview data that formed the narrative transcript outlined Tiffany’s and my discussions about our lives, indicating that art making was extremely important to both of us. To reflect its importance, I incorporated the art making theme into the comic book through image and text combinations. For example, Woven features seven pages

(Figure 20, 25–29, 32, 34) where a character makes art as part of the goal to communicate the art making theme with readers. In Figure 34, the reader is provided with step-by-step instructions to make the scarf project featured in the comic book. The comic book visually communicated the art making theme so that the authors and illustrator could connect with the reader. Providing scarf instructions to encourage art making with readers exemplifies that art making can connect people through shared creative experiences. Art making shifted power from teacher to student as

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illustrated by the creation of Tiffany’s scarf. The scarf, featured prominently on the cover page

(Figure 20), was the catalyst that stimulated characters to discuss their desire to participate in the class project. The scarf project also allowed Ms. Perkins to rely on Tiffany to accomplish a learning goal shared by both women. For example, in Woven, Ms. Perkins inquires asks Tiffany ways assist Tiffany by providing better instruction to Tiffany with consideration of her tactile abilities with her prosthesis (Figure 27). Ms. Perkins communicates her desire to learn about how to instruct Tiffany through Tiffany’s art making processes.

In the survey, participant responses reflected a high interest in art making. The collected survey data from the ES community correlated with Tiffany’s and my personal communication about the importance of art making. As explained in chapter 4, the survey revealed that 70% of survey participants viewed art making as extremely important in their lives, 25% viewed art making as moderately important, and 5% viewed art making as slightly important. No survey respondents indicated a lack of importance or neutrality towards art making. The findings reveal that Woven communicated this theme, along with the themes of community and identity, to produce correlating results in the survey responses. Despite differences in the survey method from the case study interview method, both indicated correlating results. Thus, the comic book affected ES community participants. Indeed, survey participants indicated that the impact of reading the comic book was, from their perspectives, significant and applicable to their experiences, with some stating that they would share the text in their classrooms and with other

ESs.

Conclusion

This research, along with the findings from previous studies, supports the conclusion that communicating personal narratives of minority identities through comics affects perceptions of

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these groups’ representations and identities. I argue that communicating layered personal narratives in a comic book told Tiffany and my story through an unflattened, multidimensional narrative that offered insight into underrepresented ES community. Art education scholars will profit from research methods and findings incorporating arts-based practice to study art students and teachers. Women’s studies scholars benefit from this study because of a representative sample of ESs in the US reporting that reading a personal narrative affected their beliefs and motivations. These narratives and the participant responses emerging out of this study reduce a lack of data about ES identity. Findings surrounding ES identity is of importance to the field of women’s studies for the reason that it contributes to research in a field that investigates systems of oppression to an end that affects the lives and experiences of women. This study advances intersectionality through its application to art education and demonstrates the interdisciplinary nature of intersectional theory. Findings demonstrate that sharing a counter-story in comics, as detected by the case study and survey results, is an effective way to communicate a personal ES narrative with the ES population. This finding should not be ignored by scholars studying the education of minority groups or those studying minority representation in comics.

Relevance to Art Education

This study exemplifies ways art educators can respond to research about ES identity. The process of making comics and sharing narratives can help expand the knowledge of minority groups in art education. This study provides a quantitative and qualitative analysis of the current body of literature on arts-based counter-storytelling. Discussing discriminations and unfair treatment experienced by ES students, along with the misconceptions about minority students, provided important insights into this dissertation as a source for studying intersectional identities in art education.

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Testing collaborative arts-based research methods is another way in which this study is relevant to art education. Art educators should test methods for studying the use of comics in education research to continue visual narratives worthy of critical lenses and hybrid scholarship.

The comics method in this study utilized frameworks of multiple identities experiencing oppression. Characters in the narrative of Woven illustrated some of the oppressions Tiffany, specifically, faced, but in ways also experienced by both Wally and me. In the process of co- authoring the comic book, Tiffany and I discussed our experiences as ES art students in confluence with one another. The use of an intersectional lens when creating arts-based research enforces the notion that these individually and merged experiences added multiple layers of dimension to Woven’s characters.

Using a comics methodology was an appropriate and relevant means of studying student and teacher comics within the field of art education. This methodology has the potential to be generative and broaden future discourse. A comics methodology invites scholars interested in comics studies to explore these contexts and environments. Until recently, comics studies had a marginalized history in scholarly study and fine art media. Through their use in education, comics have found a place in the classroom as an expressive pedagogical tool through which educators and learners can find deeper meaning in complex narratives. Comics can chronicle the events and histories of students and teachers from multiple perspectives. These multiple perspectives benefit art educators who attempt to understand unfamiliar narratives. Teachers using comics to understand different perspectives can facilitate students’ storytelling abilities. As facilitators, teachers can use this study as a guide in instructing students to accept and make comics. The combined perspectives of Wally as illustrator, and Tiffany and me as co-authors formed into a single, contiguous ES narrative. By utilizing intersectional practice, this study

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exhibited the unique experiences of ESs that are otherwise underrepresented in art education. It is my aspiration for Woven to have an impact on the ownership of research in art education through its application in related fields of study.

Relevance to Women’s Studies

The findings in this study are significant for women’s studies scholars when analyzing the experiences, discriminations, and misconceptions about ESs as part of diversity and inclusion research. To thoroughly comprehend ES identity, I examined discourses related to ESs, such as intersectionality, Critical Race Theory, and Dis/ability Critical Race Theory. I came to understand ES identity by expanding the comics methods focus. The comics method provides processes to share community issues among community members. I built upon the initial formula by using a feminist lens of intersectionality to approach the collaboration processes.

Intersectionality provided a framework that helped me analyze ES representation in mainstream comics and interpret the themes that arose from the case study interview data. In the same way many comic book processes does not have one creator informing all aspects of the production, new and different insights of ES identity and how that identity is represented was part of the discourse that began in the comics method up to and beyond participant responses and feedback. For example, the social identity of the comic book’s art student and teacher characters represent Tiffany’s and my experience who initially have an unequal power dynamic.

Intersectionality helped examine was how ES students and teachers shift and situate their multilayered identities in educational spaces with varying authority over teaching and learning.

The systems of oppression and ways these oppressions are felt by whole communities and individuals in these communities justifies why intersectionality is an appropriate framework to use with ES individuals and community members. The use of an intersectional lens assisted in

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viewing the experiences that Tiffany and I discussed through a framework of multiple oppressions and a celebration of identity.

Implications of Comics Methodology in Practice

The need for a methodology specific to making comics through ES student and teacher collaboration enabled the theoretical analysis of a comics method. The use of comics methodology in this study appears to indicate that its creation was a substantial turning point in analyzing and utilizing comics as research tools and subjects of study. There is now a need to re- evaluate a comics methodology and its effect on comics research, ways comics research is conducted, and to consider ways the methodology might change comics methods. Specifically, art education scholarship would benefit from comics methodology in practice because the practical implications of a comics method are that it offers users (students and teachers) a set of steps to make informed, consistent changes to art making processes. Women’s studies scholarship would favor comics methodology in practice because of the originality and value of content created by its users. The originality of this methodology lies within the creation of a holistic model based on integrated inquiry and arts-based processes. Employing relevant tools

(e.g., making comics) and techniques (e.g., equal content collaboration among users) extends comics methodology’s capabilities to support the implementation of an intersectional framework.

Alternative approaches are needed to address the problems that comics researchers face. I suggest that the comics methodology can be beneficial in other challenging comics studies where selecting a singular approach proves inadequate. Looking forward, I consider the implications of a changing academic reception to the use of comics in scholarly research as an indicator that comics methodology will withstand use in practice. With adequate time for critique and

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development, which were not possible within the scope of this study’s goals, comics methodology could be applied in future comics research by other scholars.

Comics Methodology Researching ES Identity

This dissertation contributed new knowledge to the fields of art education and women’s studies in its exploration of ES identity by employing a comics methodology within comics research. For example, feedback and revisions of a script featuring an ES narrative occurred over a period of 15 weeks. During that time, I discovered several overlaps in discussion about identity while reviewing the feedback from the study’s contributors: Tiffany, Wally and myself. Upon reviewing our individual feedback, I found links between our experiences related to intersections of gender, race, and disability. I endorsed the notion of revisiting the specific ways in which our

ES identity affected our art education experiences. Comics methodology, with its attention to integrating multiple narratives through staged processes (pencil stage, ink stage, color stage), deepened the study’s exploration of ES identity by complementing its qualitative understanding of students’ and teachers’ identities.

Comics Methodology Using Narrative Inquiry

The development of the study’s comics methodology changed my research process to include modes of critical thinking, observation, and collaboration based on principles from narrative inquiry research methods. For example, Tiffany, Wally, and I considered the design elements of the comic book’s front cover (see Appendix) would communicate the concept of ownership and multi-person perspectives. The first cover design vertically listed our names.

After deliberating, we decided that the cover design should reflect all three of our equal ownership of the comic: Tiffany, Wally, and I each own one-third of the rights to the story.

Arranging the names on the title horizontally visually reflects the equality of our ownership,

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even though Wally is the sole illustrator while Tiffany and I are co-authors. I did not anticipate this development, but I welcomed it. In this small way, Tiffany, Wally, and I recognized that a collaborative narrative was presented in the comic book that would have not come together without all of our perspectives.

Comics Methodology Using Arts-Based Research

The comics methodology informed ways Tiffany, Wally, and I created Woven as part of using arts-based research practices. Making Woven with a past art student and illustrator also discerned ways in which tasks associated with content creation were recorded and shared.

Springgay, Irwin, & Kind (2005; 2008) describe the multiple narratives that create relationships between community, art, knowledge and research while conducting arts-based research. As artists, researchers, and teachers enacting living inquiry, Springgay, Irwin, and Kind (2008) use arts-based research to view classrooms, teachers, students, and caregivers as distinct, separate elements of the larger whole. Instead of viewing learning as an event that occurs in isolation,

Springgay et al. focus on learning in relation to multiple entities responding to one another. In this way, comics methodology distributes power among co-authors and illustrator through collaborative art making. The arts-based processes involved enmesh the considerations of all participants who are actualized in the shared ES identity.

Recommendations for Future Research

Continued investigation into using comics in education research, both as a tool and subject of study, should be undertaken. Moreover, these findings may encourage others to contribute to this body of knowledge about ES art students and teachers. Future research might provide insights into understanding the dynamics involved in studying multiple minority group members, explaining why ESs’ specific identity may be overlooked in educational diversity and

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inclusion research. Further research into accurate representations of women of color and minority leadership in visual media that affect education outcomes for ES students and teachers is necessary for both fields. Future research on ES art students and teachers should identify specific gains in art education and women’s studies fields based on my recommendation to address the education disparity that exists for multiple minority students and teachers by having them create their own image representations and stories. Literature supporting my recommendations advocates for critical perspectives on mainstream and alternative comics

(Singsen, 2017), constructing images to illustrate and change our divided society that leaves students behind (Taylor, Gillborn, & Ladson-Billings, 2009), and describing minority lived experience through storytelling (Delgado & Stefancic, 2017). Future research should also extend and enhance this study’s reach into the fields of art education and women’s studies. In this section, I detail three specific recommendations for future research: a comics publishing comparison, more studies using comics methodology, and publishing an ES anthology.

Comics Publishing Comparison

A critical comparison of commercially available alternative and mainstream comics focused on the 1980s through mid-1990s publications (Singsen, 2017). Similarly, scholars have reviewed multiple minority characters in mainstream and alternative comics, specifically women of color characters (Whaley, 2016). This study examined representations of ES identity in mainstream comics and alternative comics. A deeper analysis of the incorporation of minority characters in both platforms would extend into future research of comics character’s identity representation. This recommendation would revisit the research from Singsen’s initial comparison of minority characters and readers by considering that mainstream and alternative comics are shared. Specific new research based on my recommendations would include

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examining the exchange of content by internet users, and that these exchanges are affected by globalized readership and authorship. My hope is that future research on ways the identities of people who create comic books affect characters and the narrative will provide insight into alternative and mainstream comics publishing.

Comics Methodology

Further research surrounding comics methodology would aid scholars who collect, generate, and analyze data using comics. As a new methodology, comics methodology needs further testing within art education and women’s studies research. Women's studies scholars using comics methodology should seek to generate comics from a feminist perspective. Harding

(1987) has recognized the importance of using women's experiences as resources for social analysis. She discusses revealing women’s experiences through scientific inquiry, with the goal of discovering “our total picture” (p. 7). Through a comics methodology, a latticework of women's experiences and varying perspectives can aid in attaining a more fully realized record.

Another area for future research includes ways a comics methodology aids in the collaborative nature of the personal narratives found in comic books. In chapter 3, I described the act of collaborative creation in which Tiffany, Wally, and I engaged to make Woven. By including all collaborators as equal contributors, this story of ES perspective brought intersecting layers of experience to the narrative presented in Woven. This idea of collaboration and contribution was furthered by each contributor’s equal ownership to the rights of the comic book.

ES Anthology

A future endeavor in this research may involve incorporating the narratives of ESs into an anthology format. Authors involved in future research of a women of color with disabilities anthology should discuss the self-definition of ES identity and experiences, and thus aid in the

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collective nature of the ES community. Without further research into the telling of personal stories of ESs, their narratives may remain largely unspoken. Sandell (2003) has noted that anthologies synthesize knowledge into a thematic framework that shapes and legitimizes the field through its examples. Previous disabled women’s anthologies (e.g., Browne, Connors &

Stern, 1985; Driedger & Gray, 1994; Saxton & Howe, 1987) may include some women of color, but lack in overall representation. According to my research on ES identity, disabled women’s anthologies underrepresent women of color. If ESs organized an anthology detailing their identity, the conversations in the anthology could align and overlap with each other to communicate various messages from the ES community. The anthology might contain works that align around the same central theme of exceptional sistahood to become an important and useful collection for people interested in these narratives. As the first of its kind, it could contain a broad range of literature concerning women, race, and ability status. It might include discussions of feminist critiques of media representations as well as sections on theory for Black feminist critical disability (Clutterbuck, 2015; Bailey & Mobley, 2019). At a time when feminist conversations in mainstream media confront and challenge assumptions about intersecting identities, this kind of anthology could reveal the positionality of ESs or develop ideas of what ideal media representation could look like.

This study has presented existing canons of thought surrounding the intersections of gender, race, and ability through a sense of shared identity among ESs. The roles that racism and sexism play in oppressing women of color was largely discussed in the anthology This Bridge

Called My Back: Writings of Radical Women of Color (Anzaldúa & Moraga, 1981) and in Home

Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Smith, 1983). In these texts, women of color with disabilities have challenged how White feminists lack understanding, failing to recognize differences in the

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history and struggle of Black women, specifically “beyond sisterhood, is still racism” (Lorde, in

Moraga & Anzaldúa, 2015, p. 93). To examine ES identity between ESs, I propose that retaining and reflecting this population’s diverse perspectives could be organized in an anthology.

Celebrating ESs through contributions to an anthology of their specific experiences might acknowledge commonalities among all people within women’s studies discourse. Therefore, an

ES anthology may further the notion of community through theoretical contributions.

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APPENDIX

FIGURES

Figure 20. Front cover art, Woven, 2018. Two seated women lean slightly over a large terracotta-colored work table The brown-skinned younger woman wears her medium-length hair in a pony-tail, and is dressed in a school uniform. The younger woman’s left hand is darker and a bit larger than her right hand. The tan-skinned older woman has fluffy brown hair, and she wears a cardigan. Both women are smiling quietly as the younger woman weaves a green-striped scarf on a hand loom. The older woman assists by moving the growing scarf across the table. The blue-green yarn unraveling from the skein of yarn spells out the title of the comic book, Woven, on the work table. The authors’ and illustrator’s names are hand-written at the bottom of the page: Veronica Hicks, Alesha Nichols, and E. Jackson.

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Figure 21. Page 1, Woven, 2018. The page is painted in a glazed, airy, pink morning light, and it has six panels. Panel 1 – The young woman from the comic book cover is sleeping in bed next to a small child. Both are wearing sleep caps, and they are facing each other. The morning alarm is ringing at 5:00 am. Panel 2 – The woman is out of bed, and she lovingly tucks the child in to sleep longer. Panel 3 – The woman faces a mirror in the bathroom and sleepily brushes her teeth over a sink that holds several beauty and grooming products. Panel 4 – Still wearing her pajama shirt, the woman straps on her prosthetic left arm. The panel is cropped so that the woman’s face is only partially in the panel. Her torso, chest, and neck are shown from the waist up. Panel 5 – A brown-skinned woman sits on the steps on the upper right side of the younger woman. The steps lead downstairs to the main floor of the house. The younger woman wears a school uniform that consists of a white polo shirt with a black, long-sleeve shirt underneath and khaki pants. The slightly older family member who wears braids says, “Hold still, Tiffany,” as she fashions the younger woman’s hair is done up in a ponytail with bangs. Tiffany uses her right hand to put on her left sneaker.

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Figure 22. Page 2, Woven, 2018. The page is painted in saturated orange and deep purple tones, and it has three panels. Panel 1 – A conversation between Tiffany, her older brother, and her aunt takes place in the busy kitchen. Her older brother is seated at the kitchen table, and he also wears a school uniform, holds a cereal bowl, and talks to Tiffany while chewing. He says, “It’s your turn for chores,” to which Tiffany replies, “I already did mine this week!” Auntie, an older large woman who wears an apron, looks back from the kitchen sink where she dries dishes to say, “Y’all can both do another chore. Baby girl, I wouldn’t mind help with dinner tonight.” Tiffany replies with a half- hearted “Okay.” Panel 2 – Tiffany returns to the dark bedroom to kiss the child goodbye sweetly and to tuck her in one more time with her right hand. The sleeping child has a small smile on her face. Panel 3 – Tiffany partially turns around to see her older sister smiling, leaning on the doorframe with her arms folded. Her older sister says, “She’s just like you … in looks and attitude.”

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Figure 23. Page 3, Woven, 2018. The page is painted in warm pinks, oranges, and browns, and it has five panels. Panel 1. – Tiffany runs through her neighborhood to catch the public bus with a backpack on her back. People are waiting in line to get on the bus. Panel 2. – People sit in all the available seats near Tiffany. Tiffany rests her book bag and left arm on her lap. A man seated on her right side is focused on interacting with his cell phone, a child sits to her left and pays attention to Tiffany’s arm while kicking his feet, and the parent of the child clutches her purse and sneaks a few glances at Tiffany’s left arm and hand. Panel 3. – Tiffany notices the attention from the curious child and smiles. The curious child waves at Tiffany. The child’s parent notices the child paying attention to Tiffany and is not happy. Panel 4. – The parent angrily scolds the child saying, “DON’T STARE.” The child becomes upset, and so does Tiffany. Panel 5. – Tiffany grows to three times her normal size, becoming hypervisible, but no one notices how big she has become. Tiffany blushes, casts her eyes downward towards the floor, and crouches as a giant version of herself for the rest of the bus ride.

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Figure 24. Page 4, Woven, 2018. The page is painted in warm, sandy browns, and it has four panels. The top of the page features a page break. Panel 1 – Tiffany is now wearing gym shorts and a crew-neck t-shirt, although she is still wearing her black long-sleeved undershirt. She warms up for her coed high-school gym class by playing basketball with a classmate. A gym teacher holds a clip board and shouts in the distance. “Good morning! Line up for drills.” Panel 2 – Tiffany and her classmates are gathered together, facing the gym teacher, and they are ready for instructions. The gym teacher says to the group, “Now let’s practice two-handed passes.” Panel 3 – Tiffany casts her eyes down and away from her gym teacher, who begins to stumble on his words saying, “Or, uh, whatever you can manage.…” Tiffany starts to fade away, becoming partially invisible and translucent. Tiffany is now an outline, and she does not have a solid form. Her gym teacher is sweating, and he scratches his head in embarrassment. Panel 4 – Tiffany and her classmates are in the locker room getting their regular school uniforms and possessions from the metal lockers. As she grabs her book bag from a large locker, Tiffany turns slightly to witness two girl classmates smiling and chatting behind her. The two girls chat

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back and forth with lowered voices, one hiding her mouth with her hand while whispering. Tiffany cannot hear the soft vocal chatter, and she has a worried face.

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Figure 25. Page 5, Woven, 2018. This page is painted in warm, sunny browns, and it has three panels. Panel 1 – Tiffany hangs her head as she walks into her next classroom. Two classmates greet the art teacher saying, “Hi Ms. Perkins,” and “Hi Miss Perky,” to which Ms. Perkins says, “Hi!” while leaning on a podium and writing down attendance on a clipboard. Ms. Perkins is the same fluff-haired, tan-skinned adult woman who is featured on the front cover of the comic book. The two students and Ms. Perkins are smiling. Panel 2 – Tiffany is getting ready to sit down on a stool in front of a large wooden work table. Seated at the table is a brown-skinned classmate who has corn rows in her hair, wears glasses, and is smiling. The classmate greets Tiffany with a cheerful demeanor saying, “Hey!” to which Tiffany, with her head lowered, responds with a meek “Hi” and a small smile as she prepares to sit down. Panel 3 – The art classroom environment has large work tables where several students work at different stages of drawing still-life centerpieces featuring bowls of fruit on pieces of cloth. The students chat with one another, while one casually checks her cell phone, which is beneath the table alongside her left leg. The rest of the students draw or talk with Ms. Perkins.

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Figure 26. Page 6, Woven, 2018. This page is painted with the same warm, sandy browns as page 5, and it has four panels. Panel 1 – Ms. Perkins speaks to the entire class and says, “Next week, we’ll start a project based off Kente cloth – a scarf weaving.” She is smiling as she continues to address the class, “Think about what yarn colors you want.” Panel 2 – Ms. Perkins says, “It can be for yourself OR for someone else! It’s time to clean up!” A student hollers out, “I want white and blue Miss Perky!!” Ms. Perkins holds a clipboard and pen, and scribbles down what the student says. She says, “Wait, repeat that!” as she faces the student who made the yarn color request. Tiffany and her classmate remain seated. Panel 3 – Tiffany looks up towards Ms. Perkins, who stands between Tiffany’s seat and her classmate’s seat. Ms. Perkins, worried, blushes and furrows her eyebrows, and asks. “May I speak with you, Tiffany? I’ll write a pass.” Tiffany responds with a sharp “Oh” while her classmate cleans up her artwork, but listens to their conversation with wide eyes. Panel 4 – Nervously, Ms. Perkins touches her left arm with her right hand. Tiffany speaks with a smaller voice saying, “I have lunch next so it’s ok…” while her classmate walks away from the classroom. The classmate turns back and motions to Tiffany yelling, “I’ll save you a seat!” Another classmate finishes packing up her belongings to leave the art room.

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Figure 27. Page 7, Woven, 2018. This page is painted with warm brown colors, and it has four panels. Panel 1 – Ms. Perkins picks up a hand loom from her podium at the front of the classroom by the chalkboard. She motions with it towards Tiffany and explains, “We’re using a hand loom for next week’s project, most hold the loom with one hand,” as Tiffany remains seated and listens to her teacher. Panel 2 – Ms. Perkins continues by saying, “and weave with their other.” Tiffany turns her body towards Ms. Perkins. Both of Tiffany’s hands are on the table as Ms. Perkins explains this part of the project. Tiffany’s cheeks are hot from blushing. Panel 3 – Ms. Perkins grasps a skein of yarn, and she has a warm blush to her cheeks as she admits, “I’ve tried to think about how you can participate as well, but…” with worried eyes. Panel 4 – Ms. Perkins finishes by saying, “I’m just not sure how to instruct you,” as Tiffany meets her gaze with wide, concerned eyes and a worried brow.

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Figure 28. Page 8, Woven, 2018. This page is painted with coffee roasted browns, and it has two panels. Panel 1 – Ms. Perkins sits on a nearby stool, touching the hand loom and skein of yarn now on the table in front of Tiffany. While Tiffany is sitting with Ms. Perkins, hypervisible Tiffany from the bus sits with invisible Tiffany from gym class at a nearby work table. Both hypervisible Tiffany and invisible Tiffany turn towards Ms. Perkins and Tiffany’s table, and they brace to hear more. Ms. Perkins says, “I know that you’re a capable mother and young woman, and there must be a way for you to use the loom.” Panel 2. – Ms. Perkins asks Tiffany, “Would you teach me how to teach you to participate in this project?” Tiffany focuses on rolling the skein of yarn with her right hand, and she now has a gentle smile.

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Figure 29. Page 9, Woven, 2018. This page is painted with soft pinks and warm browns, and it has four panels. Panel 1 – Tiffany’s right hand gently holds her prosthetic left hand. Tiffany says, “I can use the small opening in my prosthetic to brace the loom…” Panel 2 – Continuing on, Tiffany says with a cheerful smile, “and use my right hand to do the weaving. I’d just need someone to cut and retie the yarn for me between colors.” Panel 3 – Ms. Perkins puts her hand over her heart and exclaims, “Thank you Tiffany! It was silly of me to even have worried.” Tiffany listens intensely, while crossing her arms. Panel 4 – Tiffany’s blushing, happy face fills the panel as she responds by saying, “I’m glad you asked. I’m really excited to make my scarf!”

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Figure 30. Page 10, Woven, 2018. This page is painted with creamy oranges and pinks and leathery browns, and it has four panels. Panel 1 – Tiffany reads her hall pass as she walks through the busy high-school hallway where students interact with their phones, open lockers, and happily chat with each other. An inner dialogue of Tiffany’s thoughts reads, “People describe me in many different ways. My family calls me sweet, feisty, Baby Girl – and I am all of those things.” Panel 2 – Tiffany looks onward down the hallway with her cheeks blushing, and she thinks, “Others put their own descriptions on me. Disabled? Handicapped? I just don’t consider myself those things. I was born this way, how I live and how I choose to be.” Panel 3 – Hypervisible Tiffany is nervously sweating, touching her prosthetic arm with her right hand as regular-sized people look at her. Tiffany thinks, “Some days, I feel hypervisible.” Panel 4 – Invisible Tiffany moves past a group of talking teenagers like vapor, with no indication that her presence was noticed by anyone. She thinks, “And other days, I’m the opposite.”

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Figure 31. Page 11, Woven, 2018. This page is painted with buttery creams and browns, sherbet oranges, tender greens and blues, and it has four panels. Panel 1 – Showing many ideas at once of girls of color with different abilities enjoying their lives, Tiffany describes the people she has seen in the past. In the left side of the panel, a girl with brown skin and two hair buns smiles and wears a green apron over her work uniform. The girl is at a checkout counter providing service to a light-skinned customer wearing black glasses and paying with a credit card for goods. In the center of the panel, a tan-skinned girl in a sundress has straight black hair and red shoes. She pushes her wheelchair forward in a tree-lined park with one hand, and she uses the other to hold the hand of a tan-skinned boy with slicked- back brown hair in blue jeans and a green vest. The boy walks next to the girl and looks lovingly into her eyes as she does the same to him. In the right side of the panel, two girls jump joyfully with hands in the air and around each other’s shoulders, enjoying a concert. The fair-skinned girl on the left has light brown hair, and she cheers aloud excitedly as she kicks her foot. The brown- skinned girl on the right has large, curly brown hair and wears a green crop-top, white high- waisted shorts, knee-high white socks, and a prosthetic leg is attached at her left thigh. The brown-skinned girl jumps along with her friend in delight as a massive crowd behind them

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follows along. Tiffany’s thoughts read, “When I see girls like me working… on a date… or at a concert…” Panel 2 – Tiffany swings her leg over the cafeteria lunch table bench to sit with her group of high-school friends who have already started eating. Tiffany sets her lunch tray on the table, and is greeted with lively waves and upbeat smiles from her classmates. Tiffany thinks, “All of a sudden, I’m like wow, maybe I need to be braver – and not care what anyone else thinks!” Panel 3 – Tiffany smiles as she shares her seat on the public transit bus with an older, brown- skinned man who wears black glasses and a baseball cap. The older man converses with another brown-skinned person on the bus, who places a hand on the man with dark glasses’ shoulder. Tiffany rests her prosthetic arm and her backpack on her lap, and gazes contently out the bus window. Tiffany thinks, “What’s most important – what I’m trying my best to do – is accept and love myself.” Panel 4 – Tiffany stretches out her arm and crouches towards her daughter, who runs towards her on the sidewalk. Her daughter wears her hair in two tiny black puffs, and she wears pink-and- white-striped pants and a white shirt. Tiffany and her daughter both smile wide in anticipation of their embrace. Her older sister stands with one hand in her pocket facing them, and she enjoys watching their reunion. Tiffany thinks, “Because I’ve got people in my corner.”

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Figure 32. Page 12, Woven, 2018. This page is painted with dusty pinks, light oranges, faded purples, and rich browns, and it has five panels. Panel 1 – Following her older sister inside the house, Tiffany happily removes and tosses her prosthetic arm, flinging it onto the couch where a white-and-orange dog takes a nap on a cushion. Tiffany thinks, “Who love me for who I am, any way I am.” Panel 2 – Pots and pans sizzle on the stove in the kitchen, where Auntie shares a taste of dinner with Tiffany. Tiffany closes her eyes in enjoyment, and she holds a napping, tiger-striped cat with her right arm near her chest. Further behind Auntie and Tiffany, her older brother and older sister sit at the dining room table. Her older brother works hard on a drawing, while her older sister organizes his papers on the table top. Tiffany thinks, “Who believe in my capabilities.” Panel 3 – Tiffany stands in the art room at the work table to show a seated Ms. Perkins her progress on the scarf weaving project. Tiffany is wearing a brown hoodie, and she smiles with a warm flush to her cheeks in pride at her stunning, green-striped scarf. Ms. Perkins touches the scarf, and she happily admires the length and quality of Tiffany’s art project. Tiffany thinks, “People who want me to succeed.” Panel 4 – In her bedroom, Tiffany sits upright on her bed with her legs crossed beside her daughter. As Tiffany writes in a notebook, she is amused to notice her daughter pulling the scarf weaving out of the backpack on the floor and dragging it onto the bed. Tiffany thinks, “And count on me to teach them.”

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Panel 5 – Tiffany wraps the plush scarf weaving around her daughter, and she gathers her up in her arms. Tiffany and her daughter share a warm, loving embrace, while Tiffany thinks, “What’s important in this life.”

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Figure 33. Page 13, Woven, 2018. This page has a plain white background, a portrait drawing of Tiffany, a portrait drawing of Ms. Perkins, and a sleeping cat and dog cuddled together. The text reads “About the authors.” Next to Tiffany’s portrait, the text reads, “Dealing with prejudice? Other people may have ideas about what I can or can’t do that are just plain WRONG! Being a woman of color, a student, and a mom is part of what makes me, me!” Next to the portrait of Ms. Perkins, the text reads, “Did you know some disabilities are visible and some are invisible, or unlabeled? As a teacher it’s hard to admit when you don’t know everything – but you won’t seem foolish getting input from a student on how to best teach them! You may be surprised by what you learn!” Underneath the sleeping, tiger-striped cat and the orange-and-white dog, the text reads, “So what if you’re different? You belong! Connect with others by finding your crew, express yourself creatively, and be your best self!” A painted light orange stripe arching over the sponsors of the comic reads, “This comic was made possible by.” The sponsors are Small but Mighty Arts, Divas with Disabilities Project, and the Penn State University’s Africana Research Center.

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Figure 34. Page 14, Woven, 2018. This page has step-by-step drawings and text directions to make your own scarf weaving, featuring a plain white background and simple black, white, and red colored pencil sketches that illustrate the corresponding directions. 1. Materials you will need are scissors, tape, 5-8 straws, and yarn in as many colors as you like! 2. Prep your materials. Cut straws in half. Measure and cut yarn to the size of the scarf you want, at least three feet! Use one piece of yarn for each straw. 3. Suck a piece of yarn through a straw. 4. Fold the tail over the straw and tape it. Repeat for each straw! 5. Tie the end of the yarn in a loose knot. The straws are lined up in a row, and all the yarn is loosely knotted beyond the straws. Hey, a loom! 6. Tie a double knot on the outermost straw with whatever color yarn you want. Tie yarn on the first straw in your row of straws. 7. Hold your straw loom and begin to weave, looping the yarn under and then over the straws. Hold the hand loom with one hand and weave with the other. Keep the straw that has the original knot on the outside of the loom.

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8. Keep repeating, alternating the pattern! Above the original knot, so you are pushing the yarn down with each new row. 9. To change colors, cut and knot off the yarn, knot in the new color, and resume weaving! 10. Keep going until your scarf reaches the end of your cut yarn. 11. Remove the top tape and knot it there, too! 12. Enjoy!

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Figure 35. Back cover art, Woven, 2018. The back cover is colored with a warm brown background and cream-colored handwriting that reads “2018” in the center of the page.

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VITA OF VERONICA HICKS EDUCATION M.A. Art Education: Emphasis in Special Populations, Moore College of Art & Design, 2013 B.A. Art Education, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 2008

SELECTED TEACHING EXPERIENCE CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, SACRAMENTO: Assistant Professor, ART 135: Secondary Art Education, August 2019 – Present. ART 137: Art for Exceptional Children, August 2019 – Present. UNIVERSITY OF THE PEOPLE: Instructor, EDUC 5210: Learning Theory and Implications for Instruction, June 2019 – August 2019. WEST CHESTER UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: Instructor, MDA 240: Integrating Art in the Elementary Classroom, August 2016 – December 2017. UNIVERSITY OF THE ARTS: Instructor, AEDU 602: History of Ideas in Art and Museum Education, January 2017 – May 2017. THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY: Instructor, INART062: West African and African American Arts: from the 1960s to the present, August 2016 – December 2017. WMNST 100: Introduction to Women's and Gender Studies, August 2015 – May 2016.

SELECTED SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS Hicks, V., & LeBlanc, N. (2019). “Just” a conversation about studio practice. Visual Arts Research Journal. Volume 45, Issue 1. Horoschak, L., Gavin, K., & Hicks, V. (2014). Reflections on Moore College of Art and Design's master's degree program in art education with an emphasis on special populations. 2013 VSA Intersections: Arts and Special Education Exemplary Programs and Approaches, 127-146.

SELECTED PROFESSIONAL PRESENTATIONS “Reframing the Mythical Black Women: Black Feminist Consciousness Through Sequential Art.” National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference in Baltimore, MA November 2017. “Voices in Art Education: A Movement Embracing Abilities and Identities of Disability.” 1st International Conference on Disability Studies, Arts & Education, Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland, September 2017. “Graphic Narratives of the Black, Woman, and (Dis)abled Body.” Disability, Arts and Health Conference, University of Bergen in Bergen, Norway, September 2016. “Who Will Teach Me About Myself? African American Art in Exhibition Spaces of Oppression,” Visual Arts and Art Education, Kwame Nkrumah University, Kumasi, Ghana, March 2015.

SELECTED PROFESSIONAL MEMBERSHIP AND CERTIFICATES Graduate Online Teaching Certificate, The Pennsylvania State University, 2015. Representative to the Board, Pennsylvania Art Education Association Multiethnic Concerns Officer, 2017 – 2019. Officer, Pennsylvania State University Women’s Studies Graduate Organization, 2015 – 2016.