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The Graphic Novel Classroom : Powerful Teaching and Learning with Images For Jack, Shea, Regan, and Riley “It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see.” —Anaïs Nin Copyright © 2012 by Corwin Press First Skyhorse Publishing edition 2014 All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018. Skyhorse Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Skyhorse Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected]. Skyhorse® and Skyhorse Publishing® are registered trademarks of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation. Visit our website at www.skyhorsepublishing.com. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file. ISBN: 978-1-62873-734-9 eISBN: 978-1-62914088-9 Printed in China Contents List of Classroom Teaching Tools on the Companion Website Foreword James Bucky Carter Preface Acknowledgments About the Author Introduction: Welcome to the Graphic Novel Classroom PART I. LOOKING AT LITERACY IN THE GRAPHIC NOVEL CLASSROOM Chapter 1. Looking at the Comics Medium: Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics Chapter 2. Interpreting Images: Shaun Tan’s The Arrival Rachel Masilimani’s Two Kinds of People Gene Leun Yang’s American Born Chinese Chapter 3. Looking at the Big Picture: Will Eisner’s A Contract With God and A Life Force PART II. LOOKING AT MEMOIR IN THE GRAPHIC NOVEL CLASSROOM Chapter 4. Pictures, Perception, and the Past: Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis Chapter 5. Leaving a Legacy Through Images: Art Spiegelman’s Maus Elie Wiesel’s Night Scott Russell Sanders’s “Under the Influence” PART III. LOOKING AT SUPERHEROES IN THE GRAPHIC NOVEL CLASSROOM Chapter 6. A Glimpse of the Superhero Genre: Frank Miller’s Batman: The Dark Knight Returns Chapter 7. Making the Invisible Visible: Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta Afterword: The Value of Teaching Graphic Novels Resources References and Further Reading Index Additional materials and resources related to The Graphic Novel Classroom can be found on the companion website. www.corwin.com/graphicnovelclassroom List of Classroom Teaching Tools on the Companion Website Chapter 1 Will Eisner’s Graphic Storytelling and Visual Narrative Assessment Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics Study Guide Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics Chapter Three Class Activity Understanding Comics Concepts Assessment: Chris Ware’s “Unmasked” Chapter 3 Discussion Prompts for Will Eisner’s “A Contract with God” Chapter 4 Critical Media Literacy Film Response Questions Supplementary Reading Activity: “Veiled Threat” Persepolis Discussion & Writing Prompts Persepolis: The Story of a Return Test Persepolis Online Discussion Forum Topics Persepolis Analytical Paragraph Writing Quiz Writing Lesson: Model Memoir (Mary Karr) Writing Lesson: Memoir Writing Lesson: Sensory Imagery Worksheet Memoir Composition Projects Chapter 5 Maus I: My Father Bleeds History Quizzes Maus II: And Here My Troubles Began Group Reading Activities Letter to the Author Assignment Chapter 6 Danny Fingeroth and Reader Response Superheroes Prompts Discussion and Writing Prompts for Batman Superhero Narrative Composition Projects Paragraph Analysis Writing Lesson Chapter 7 Four Corners Category Lesson V for Vendetta Quizzes Exploring the Balance of Pictures and Words Activity V for Vendetta Online Discussion Forum Questions “Behind the Painted Smile” Reader Response Questions V for Vendetta Film Response V for Vendetta Writing Workshop Materials Foreword n 2007, in the introductory chapter to Building Literacy Connections With IGraphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel, I wrote that “Although it is hoped that teachers might be convinced by this collection of essays and similar works to try comics or graphic novels in the classroom, more needs to be written to be sufficiently compelling for the most conservative educators” (p. 13). While I do not claim credit for the many comics and literacy articles and books that have been published since then, it is nice to see so many teacher-educators, humanities scholars, librarians, graduate students, and practicing teachers adding to the body of research regarding comics and literacy: a corpus, by the way, that stretches at least as far back as the 1940s. Comics and education are linked and have been for decades—centuries even, if we take into account the connections between contemporary graphica and related forms of sequential art. As I tell my students, “Anyone who has sight is a visual learner.” Humans are wired to learn visually, and the image-text interface will always be a means of learning, recording, sharing, and knowing. While I know there are still educators reluctant to integrate comics into the curriculum, to embrace fully the utility and history of the image, I take heart in the growing number of educators who see that doing so is no more a “fad” than blue jeans or movies, both of which were coming into the American consciousness around the same time as comic strips. With so many folks now mining the intersections of graphica and literacy, though, the question of ethos, or expertise and authority, must be addressed. Where does authority reside in contemporary English language arts (ELA) regarding the integration of comics and graphic novels? Within the data sets of the quantitative researcher? Within the case studies of the qualitatively minded professor? Within the well-written essay of a person deemed by fans of the form as an intelligent expert? The librarian? The teacher? The comics art creator? To me, the question is highly connected to the more general inquiry of where authority resides now in education as a whole. One of my favorite articles of the past few years addressing this question is Frederick M. Hess’s “The New Stupid” (2008). Hess suggests that while the current emphasis on quantitative data in education and education studies is appropriate, such data may also be misused or overused. Authority, Hess seems to say, doesn’t reside just in the numbers. Qualitative researchers and those employing mixed-methods would be quick to agree. Having been trained as a humanities scholar before becoming an English educator, I tend to see data-driven research as just another rhetorical tradition and approach to understanding, with inherent flaws just like any other. However, I often feel that nowadays the English in ELA is being ignored in favor of senses of ethos that devalue humanities and practitioner-based ways of knowing and communicating. For example, I see shifts in the types of articles some journals are publishing, shifts away from the rich humanities traditions that still have an important place for practicing professionals; in comics-and-literacy related work, specifically, sometimes I notice articles passing peer-review without referencing salient examples of preceding work that should be known and referenced; and I see a variety of campuses remarketing themselves as research-focused at the expense of being seen as teaching-centered. While I understand some of the reasons behind these shifts, I often feel like important nuances are being erased from the discourse of contemporary education and from what it means to be involved in a field like English education that should always bridge the humanities and the social sciences. To be fair, sometimes I see comics creators making blanket statements about learning without any mention of educational theory or figures. I have seen scholars in other fields and comics advocates make claims about teaching and comics as if simply “saying it makes it so.” Because of these things, I am quick to share with my own students, who I do hope will come to see themselves as teacher-researchers, this maxim: all research is important, and all research is bullshit. That is to say, when it comes to education and one’s practice thereof, consider everything as if it has something “valid” to offer, but always consider that it might have some flawed and limited theses, and try to figure out what those flaws and limits might be. Nothing, not even write-ups of quantitative data, can give us the complete answer: no one source, no one method, no single expertise. So, where does authority reside in ELA today? Where does it reside in the intersections of comics and education? The answer is that it must reside in multiple sources. The rusting melting pot of intellectual ideas and pedagogy must morph into a dinner table, where there are many dishes to choose from and room for everyone. That is why I am so pleased with the effort you are about to read. While many comics-and-literacy scholars do have experience using graphica in K–12 settings and have written about those experiences, many of us teach at the university level now. That’s not to say we don’t ever interact in K–12 schools, but I think we’d all be quick to say that our roles and responsibilities at our universities are not exactly the same as they were when we taught full-time in elementary, middle, or high schools. Maureen’s chapters are rooted in current actual practice with contemporary American adolescents. She knows what works and what hasn’t and knows how to use real-time teacher research—the hit-or- miss, messy, sometimes instinctual, often “based-in-theory-and-scholarly- research-but-not-a-slave-to-it” kind of information that teachers gather, sort, and analyze every day, on the go, while balancing a hundred other stimuli. Maureen shares experiences and artifacts from what she calls “the graphic novel classroom,” a place where “students liked to read and authentic literacy occurred.” She shares nothing she hasn’t used or reflected upon, and as you begin to integrate or adjust the ideas in these chapters to your own classrooms, she will be doing the same.
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