Lessons Drawn

Imagine a classroom where students put away their smart phones and enthusiastically participate in learning activities that unleash creativity and refine critical thinking. Students today live and learn in a transmedia environment that demands multi-modal writing skills and multiple literacies. This collection brings together 17 new essays on using comics and graphic novels to provide both a learning framework and hands-on strategies that transform students’ learning experiences through literary forms they respond to.

David D. Seelow is the founder of the Revolutionary Learning Initiative, the Center for Game and Simulation-Based Learning, the Online Writing Lab and the former Director of Field Experience for State University of New York Old Westbury. He teaches in the English department at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York and presents and consults nationally and internationally on curriculum design, pedagogy, culture and learning.

Edited by David D. Seelow

Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 258
Bibliographic Info: 44 photos, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2019
pISBN: 978-1-4766-7158-1
eISBN: 978-1-4766-3491-3
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments vi
Foreword by James Sturm 1
Introduction: Enjoyment and Learning (David D. Seelow) 5

Part 1. Leaping Tall Buildings: Comics and Literacy for a New Century
Teaching the Mythic with Pop Culture and Graphic Novels (Christina Angel) 12
Your Brain on Comics: The Graphic Novel in the College Classroom (Carly L. Cate and Marck L. Beggs) 28
Comics and the City: Writing and the New American Student (Stafford Gregoire) 36
Viewing Comics as Education Through Art (Kerry Freedman) 51
Death in Ancient Philosophy and the Sandman Series: A Case Study in Inquiry-Based Learning (Gerol Petruzella) 62
Reading Right to Left: Manga in the Classroom, at Fan Conventions and Online (Derek McGrath) 75
Saving the World One Class at a Time: Teaching Superhero Comics (David D. Seelow) 85
Interlude: The Infrastructure of Learning Building Institutions: Comics Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, a North American Case Study (Leah Misemer) 100
Comics Studies at the University of Dundee: A Transatlantic Case Study (Chris Murray) 111
Comics in the Community: Opportunities for Creativity and Collaboration in Community-Based Settings (Michael Bitz) 134
Reading and Writing Comics and Graphic Novels: Collaborative Best Practices Between School Librarians and Teachers (Karen W. Gavigan) 145

Part 2. Transformative Teaching: Creativity, Technology and Comics for the Future
Using Comics Storytelling to Engage Innovation and Transform ­Education: The “Writing with Pictures” Case (Lida Tsene) 154
Beyond Hair Bows and Cleavage: Helping Women Draw Their Iconic Selves (Jessica Baldanzi) 169
Teaching Comics from Constraints: Oubapo and Other Experiments in Form, Style and Technique (Chris ­Reyns-Chikuma) 184
ComicCrafting: Approaches for Working with Technology and Creating Comics in the Classroom (Keith McCleary) 205
Technology and Comics Art: An Interview with Dave Gibbons (Phillip Vaughan) 218
Choose the Format of Your Destructor: Design Choices for Comic Creators in Print and Digital Media (Daniel Merlin Goodbrey) 228

Conclusion: Learning In and Around Education (David D. Seelow) 238
About the Contributors 243
Index 247

“Recommended”—Choice