Teaching Comics and Graphic Narratives

The essays in this collection discuss how comics and graphic narratives can be useful primary texts and learning tools in college and university classes across different disciplines. There are six sections: American Studies, Ethnic Studies, Women’s and Gender Studies, Cultural Studies, Genre Studies, and Composition, Rhetoric and Communication. With a combination of practical and theoretical investigations, the book brings together discussions among teacher-scholars to advance the scholarship on teaching comics and graphic narratives—and provides scholars with useful references, critical approaches, and particular case studies.

Lan Dong is an assistant professor of English at the University of Illinois, Springfield. She is the author or editor of three books and has written a number of journal articles and book chapters on Asian American literature, children’s literature, and popular culture.

Edited by Lan Dong
Format: softcover (7 x 10)
Pages: 280
Bibliographic Info: 42 photos, notes, bibliographies, index
Copyright Date: 2012
pISBN: 978-0-7864-6146-2
eISBN: 978-0-7864-9264-0
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments       v

Foreword by Robert G. Weiner      1

Introduction: Reading and Teaching Graphic Narratives

LAN DONG       5

Part I : American Studies      11

1. Art and Commerce in the Classroom: Teaching an American Studies Course in Comics

EDWARD A. SHANNON       11

2. The Black Politics of Newspaper Comic Strips: Teaching Aaron McGruder’s The Boondocks and Keith Knight’s The K Chronicles

DANIEL STEIN       26

3. Teaching the Comics Anthology: The Readers, Authors, and Media of McSweeney’s      13

ALEXANDER STARRE       40

4. Teaching Visual Literacy Through 9/11 Graphic Narratives

CHRISTINA MEYER       53

Part II : Ethnic Studies       67

5. Drawing Attention: Comics as a Means of Approaching U.S. Cultural Diversity

DEREK PARKER ROYAL       67

6. Teaching Asian American Graphic Narratives in a “Post-Race” Era

ANNE CONG-HUYEN and CAROLINE KYUNGAH HONG       80

7. Graphic Multiculturalism: Miné Okubo’s Citizen 13660 in the Literature Classroom

JESSICA KNIGHT             94

Part III : Women’s and Gender Studies      105

8. “The Slippage Between Seeing and Saying”: Getting a Life in Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home

SUSAN R. VAN DYNE       105

9. Our Graphics, Ourselves: Graphic Narratives and the Gender Studies Classroom

M. CATHERINE JONET       119

10. Performing the Veil: Gender and Resistance in Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis and Shirin Neshat’s Photography

JUDITH RICHARDS and CYNTHIA M. WILLIAMS       130

Part IV : Cultural Studies      145

11. The Weimar Republic Redux: Multiperspectival History in Jason Lutes’ Berlin City of Stones

JOSHUA KAVALOSKI       145

12. Ivorian Bonus: Teaching Abouet and Oubrerie’s Aya

SUSANNA HOENESS-KRUPSAW       161

13. Digging Up the Dirt? Teaching Graphic Narratives in German Academia

STEFAN HOEPPNER       173

Part V : Genre Studies       185

14. Making the Unseen and the Unspoken Visible and Audible: Trauma and the Graphic Novel

EDWARD BRUNNER       185

15. Exposition and Disquisition: Nonfiction Graphic Narratives and Comics Theory in the Literature Classroom

ADRIELLE ANNA MITCHELL       198

16. Serial Self-Portraits: Framing Student Conversations About Graphic Memoir

JONATHAN D’AMORE       210

Part VI : Composition, Rhetoric, and Communication       221

17. Batman Returns (to Class): Graphic Narratives and the Syncretic Classroom

KATHARINE POLAK MACDONALD       221

18. 300 Ways to Teach the Epic

MARY ANN TOBIN       232

19. Comics (as) Journalism: Teaching Joe Sacco’s Palestine to Media Students

ALLA GADASSIK AND SARAH HENSTRA       243

About the Contributors      261

Index      265