Graphic Novels and Comics in the Classroom

Carrye Kay Syma is an associate dean and librarian at Texas Tech University. Her research interests include graphic novels and sequential art in education, and women and self-harm. She has been published in Reference Services Review and College and Research Libraries News. Robert G. Weiner is the popular culture librarian at Texas Tech University. His work has been published in the Journal of Popular Culture, Public Library Quarterly, Journal of American Culture, International Journal of Comic Art and Popular Music and Society, and is the author/editor/coeditor of numerous books related to popular culture.

“highly recommended”—Midwest Book Review; “With the publication of Graphic Novels and Comics in the Classroom, editors Carrye Kay Syma and Robert G. Weiner have given us a tangible artifact to testify to the pervasive applicability of comics in educational settings. Their contributors are serious scholars with serious ideas about teaching comic books. This is no laughing matter, but a credible means for bringing the impact of the comics form into the classrooms of the twenty-first century. The contributors represent a wide-range of intellectual disciplines where instruction in graphic storytelling form is finding a home in academia. The editors are to be praised for coordinating such a multi-disciplinary initiative, one that mirrors the emerging field of Comics Studies itself so well.”—Matthew J. Smith, co-author of The Power of Comics: History, Form & Culture.

• Table of ContentsAcknowledgmentsForeword (Robert V. Smith)Introduction (Robert G. Weiner and Carrye Kay Syma)Part I: Significance of Graphic Novels and Comics: Then andUsing Comics to Teach the Language Arts in the 1940s and 1950s (Carol L. Tilley)Stigmatization, Multimodality and Metaphor: Comics in the Adult English as a Second Language Classroom (Alice Leber-Cook and Roy T. Cook)The Attitudes of Some Students on the Use of Comics in Higher Education (Christina L. Blanch and Thalia M. Mulvihill) Part II: Teaching Graphic Novels and Comics in the Classroom“I can get college credit for reading Batman? That’s a joke, right?” Confessions of a Fanboy Professor Teaching Comic Books (David Whitt)“What the—?” Pre-Service Teachers Meet and Grapple Over Graphic Novels in the Classroom (James Bucky Carter)Teaching Intertexuality and Parody Through the Graphic “Supertext”: Martin Rowson’s The Waste Land (1990) (Kevin M. Flanagan)Part III: Graphic Novels and Comics, Beyond the Text“Remember, remember the fifth of November”: Using Graphic Novels to Teach Dystopian Literature (Daniel Ian Rubin)Exploring the Art in Sequential Art: An Art Historical ApproachTeaching Comics (Abram Fox)On Teaching Comics and Graphic Novels in the Medieval and Renaissance Classroom (Christina C. Angel)Leagues, Evildoers and Tales of Survival: Graphic Novels and the World History Classroom (Maryanne A. Rhett)“Indisciplinary” Teaching: Comics Studies and Research Writing Pedagogy (Phillip Troutman)Part IV: Specific Graphic Novels and Comics and Their Application in Educational SettingsTeaching “The Auto-Graphic Novel”: Autobiographical Comics and the Ethics of Readership (Rebecca Scherr)Teaching Theory Through Y: The Last Man (Timothy D. Arner)Approaching Literacy Features Through the Graphic Novel Logicomix (Marianna Missiou and Yiannis Koukoulas)Manga, the Atomic Bomb and the Challenges of Teaching Historical Atrocity: Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen (Jeremy R. Ricketts)174Information Comics: Risks and Pitfalls (Felix Keller and Dorothea Oechslin)Graphic N-extbooks: A Journey Beyond Traditional Textbooks (Jeremy Short, David Ketchen and Jeff Shelstad)Part V: Cultural Implications of Graphic Novels and ComicsBeyond Borders: Teaching Global Awareness Through the Graphic Novel (Lan Dong)The Benefits of Writing Comics (Diana Maliszewski)Multicultural Education Through Graphic Novels (Rebecca M. Marrall)“So, Joss, why do you always write these strong women characters?” Using Joss Whedon’s Astonishing X-Men to Teach Feminism (Erin Hollis)Sequential Art for Qualitative Research (Marcus B. Weaver-Hightower)Afterword (Mel Gibson)About the ContributorsIndex