Browsing by Subject "Comics"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Comics, curriculum and the classroom: the development and implementation of an arts-integrated Holocaust unit
    (2014-08) Johnson, Jeremy Lee
    Traditionally, the Holocaust has been taught to middle school students using a novel like Anne Frank: The Diary of Young Girl. However, with the recent adoption of the Common Core Standards many teachers must incorporate new ways of teaching content, including the use of graphic novels. This study examined how two teachers, an English teacher and reading teacher, worked collaboratively to create and implement a Holocaust unit that asked students to use comics to demonstrate their learning. While the premise of the study was to examine how teachers with no prior experience incorporated graphic novels into their classrooms, the study became something altogether different. I discuss how the teachers relied on me to teach students how to draw figures and explain the conventions of comics with the final goal of creating a research-based comic examining some element from the Holocaust. During this study I was present in the classroom four full days a week. Data collection methods included participant observation, interviews with staff and students and document collection and analysis. Findings could be categorized three ways and include resistance, gender stereotyping and the accuracy and authenticity of student-created comic narratives. Resistance occurred from both teachers and students. The English and reading teachers resisted use of the term "comic" because they considered it not serious enough for a discussion of the Holocaust. The art teacher resisted participation because he felt that comics were a lower form of art that had no place in education. Student resistance came in the form of a young man who, for example, did not believe that the school should be dedicating nine weeks to studying the Holocaust. A second significant finding focused on gendered stereotypes and how assumptions about gender were made visible through students' comments and perceptions of drawing. Interesting gender differences also existed in the ways students drew their final projects with male students' comics exhibiting depersonalization. Information was shared in an almost bullet-point manner whereas female students spent more time developing characters and exploring emotions. The final area of focus was on the ways in which accuracy and authenticity of narratives were brought into question through failure to emphasize citation of sources and inclusion of bibliographies as part of the students' research project, thus devaluing the factual value of their comic Holocaust narratives.
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    Graphic novels and multimodal literacy: a reader response study.
    (2009-02) Hammond, Heidi Kay
    Graphic novels are fiction or nonfiction books presented in comic book format that require multimodal literacy for understanding. To determine how students make meaning of and respond to a graphic novel, 23 twelfth grade students in a political science class read American Born Chinese twice. This study employed qualitative methods based on reader-response theory. Types of data collected included oral and written responses of students, student reading questionnaires, teacher and student interviews, observations as recorded in researcher field notes, and student created comics. Responses were coded through a process of reduction and interpretation. Results indicated that reading a graphic novel was a new experience for the majority of participants and they enjoyed the book. With the introduction of comics conventions and further development of multimodal literacy skills, students acquired new knowledge on a second reading of the book. Evidence from this study supports the benefits of teaching comics conventions and reading graphic novels as part of the curriculum to improve multimodal literacy skills.
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    How did comics letter columns work to establish comics as an adult medium?
    (The Middle Spaces https://themiddlespaces.com/2020/09/15/reading-comics-at-the-threshold-part-1/, 2020) Beard, David
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    Not a Trick! Not an Imaginary Tale! The History of Comic Book Payments
    (2022-07) Dykstal, Henry
    "Not a Trick! Not an Imaginary Tale! The History of Comic Book Payments" tells the story of the American comic book's development in regards to payment of creative artists and writers. Reading a wide base of comics, as well as interviews and scholarly studies of the comic book medium, the conclusion reached is the comic book industry is in a sort of feedback loop. Creators are not taken seriously, so their work is devalued. The work is devalued, and so creators are devalued. The origin of this can be found in how comics creators are paid even now. Starting from the publication of Superman to the founding in Image Comics over 50 years later, the source of revenue of comics evolved, and today takes two forms: freelance work where creators owned nothing to a situation similar to self-publishing, where the creators own everything. The conclusion is that there must be more acknowledgement of creators in a freelance system, alongside more payment in both systems. While the future of the industry, and its ability to reform, does not appear to have a strong movement, the case for creators to be paid differently and better is worth pursuing from a political, artistic, and moral standpoint.