Through the collaboration of written word and sequential art, autobiographical graphic novels are shown to captivate reader’s interest through their simultaneous depiction of emotion and action. The intertextual nature of graphic novels fosters greater student immersion leading to an increased appreciation of the author’s story. Offering a multi-layered perspective on the visualization of memory; first person graphic novels should be viewed with the same reverence we grant written and oral witness testimony, and utilized as a vital teaching tool of historical events. Utilizing examples of comics in pedagogy, and in the autobiographical works Maus, and Persepolis, this paper will illustrate the importance of this art form as an adaptable and educational tool.
Graphic novels allow their readers to engage with its substance over multiple modes within one medium. This combination of text with visuals aids students in cultivates a greater understanding of the content by forcing them to slow down in the reading process. (Williams 13) The interaction between the images and written word encourages participants into reading in a non-linear patter counter to traditional text only formats. Graphic novels curate skills not normally utilized the reader’s interaction of the visual and written texts require time. Graphic novels have been compared to the language of hypertext, where this format (Cromer, Clark 575) is categorized of being “flexible and open ended, approached in multi-layered ways” (Cromer, Clark 575 This allows students the opportunity to examine both the interdependency of the visuals and how they relate to the text in the purpose of conveying the story allowing the to deconstruct. Students are increasingly participating in the ...
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Do you ever just sit back and wonder how many images run through your brain everyday and thinking back on that how many of those were images from our society’s pop culture? With our ever growing technology and media of our society, children are constantly being exposed to visual stimuli. Paul Duncum, a professor of art education, studies how these stimuli not only affect our students and children but also how we can incorporate them into the art classroom in an effective way. In this paper I will illustrate to you the life and work of Paul Duncum. I will be talking about Duncum’s contributions to art education, his teaching philosophy, and how I can use his beliefs and teachings in my future as an art educator but first I would like to give you some background on Paul Duncum.
Persepolis is a inspirational story written by Marjane Satrapi in the perspective of a young girl’s life during a powerful, historical moment in Iran. The Islamic Revolution was a life-changing moment that impacted her view on the world around her and her innocence shaping her into the woman she is today. Not many people understand what it feels like to feel pain, hurt and abandonment as a child from major and minor things. The author writes this story and decides for it to be a graphic novel to allow the not only young readers, but also for those who do not understand what happens everyday in the world they live in. Satrapi uses all rhetorical stances, ethos, pathos, and logos to show problems, purpose and emotions.
In the essay, “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me,” Sherman Alexie discusses about how a Superman comic book was the reason he learned to read. He believes that anyone can gain education and achieve their goals if they are willing to put effort, even if the world wants to see you fail. To begin with, Alexie opened up by saying that he learned how to read by reading a “Superman” comic book. Alexie grew up in a Spokane Indian Reservation in eastern Washington. Even though his family was poor, alexie’s father would find his way to collect as many books as he could. His father influenced his love for books and reading. Furthermore, the first word he learned was “paragraphs” and he described it as a “fence that held words,” and began
“Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return” is a graphic-novel as well as a memoir, which molds the life of Marjane Satrapi with the use of illustrations and words. In Marjane’s second book about herself, she is living in Austria and speaks about her education there as well as a social life. Marjane lives in Austria for a span of four years where she experiences a lot of hardships and calamities. In this span of four year, Marjane has trouble housing herself when the fam...
While graphic novels such as Maus, Persepolis, Fun Home, and Barefoot Gen may differ greatly in content, the format of conveying a story of novel-length complexity through sequential art consolidates all these titles into one sub-genre. These graphic novels would effectively represent history in a classroom setting (besides a personal, individual enjoyment) due to the changed demographic of students in high schools and colleges in the United States (if not throughout the world). With the advent of the Internet and the popularity of the television and video...
The graphic essay “Show and Tell” by Scott McCloud is written in the form of a comic book as he explains the importance of words and images, and how to effectively use the two components when creating a comic. “Show and Tell” explains to the reader how creating a successful comic does not occur easily, as numerous components must be used in the right way and amount in order to create a product that is worthwhile to its readers. This insightful graphic essay portrays to the reader how in a comic, words and images can successfully be used in numerous ways if they are kept in balance with one another. Society traditionally believes that in a piece of literature words and images should be kept apart, whereas McCloud opposes this
I chose to read and comment on Barbara Kiefer’s “Envisioning Experience: The Potential of Picture Books.” Kiefer’s main point in writing this essay was to get the message across that children enjoy picture books that allow them to identify and make connections with the characters or the plots, and that while reading and analyzing the pictures, they gain a better sense of aesthetics and how to interpret them.
In a world dominated by technology, reading novels has become dull. Instead of immersing into books, we choose to listen to Justin Bieber’s new songs and to scroll through Instagram posts. We have come to completely neglect the simple pleasures of flipping through pages and getting to finally finish a story. Sherman Alexie and Stephan King’s essays attempt to revive this interest in books that has long been lost. They remind us of the important role that reading plays in our daily lives. “The Joy of Reading and Writing: Superman and Me,” for instance, demonstrates how being literate saved the narrator from the oppressive nature of society. The author explains that even though he was capable of reading complex books at an astonishingly young
Kleiner, Fred. Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A Global History. International ed edition. Wadsworth, January 2008.
It is very easy to agree with Moebius statement that ‘good’ picture books contain some form of invisible and intangible concepts that keeps the reader returning. In Voices in the Park it is very easy to see Moebius idea due to the ability of technology to create detailed and complex books. In contrast, Potter has produced a book that more subtle in showing this relying not on technology like Voices in the Park but working within severe limitations. Blending page turns, text, colour to create understandable concepts. Goodman comments that some would argue that these elements in pictures interfere with and detract from the text, and thus undermine the confidence of the reader. An extrapolation of this idea is that preconceived ideas and pictures of another spoil the reader’s entrance to literacy.
When writing any sort of narrative, be it novel or poem, fiction or non-fiction, scholarly or frivolous, an author must take into account the most effective manner in which to effectively convey the message to their audience. Choosing the wrong form, or method of speaking to the reader, could lead to a drastic misunderstanding of the meaning within an author’s content, or what precisely the author wants to say (Baldick 69). Even though there are quite a bit fewer words in a graphic novel than in the average novel, an author can convey just as much content and meaning through their images as they could through 60,000 words. In order to do that though, their usage of form must be thoughtfully considered and controlled. Marjane Satrapi, author of the graphic memoir The Complete Persepolis, took great pains in the creation of her panels in order to reinforce and emphasize her narrative, much like a novelist utilizes punctuation and paragraph breaks. Through her portrayal of darkness and lightness, Satrapi demonstrates that literary content influences, and is primary to, the form.
To begin, the author’s usage of graphic imagery over the course of his literature allows him to express his
Satrapi, Marjane. “Why I wrote Persepolis: a graphical novel memoir: writer Marjane Satrapi faced the challenges of life in post-revolutionary Iran. She used the graphic novel format to tell her unique story.” Marjane Satrapi. Writing!, Nov-Dec, 2003, Vol.. 26(3), p. 9(5) Cengage Learning Inc.
Looking back over the course of the semester, I feel that I learned many new and interesting uses for technology within the classroom – both for classrooms that have a lot of technology and for classrooms that are limited with technology. For the majority of the class, we utilized William Kists’ book The Socially Networked Classroom: Teaching in the New Media Age (2010), which provided multiple modes of instruction that both utilized and/or created technology. One of the first things that I remember, and consequently that stuck with me through the course’s entirety, is that individuals must treat everything as a text. Even a garden is a text. The statement made me change the way that I traditionally viewed Language Arts both as a student and as a teacher, as I very narrowly saw literature and works of the like as texts only; however, by considering nearly anything as a text, one can analyze, study, and even expand his/her knowledge. Kist (2010) states that society is “experiencing a vast transformation of the way we “read” and “write,” and a broadening of the way we conceptualize “literacy” (p. 2). In order to begin to experience and learn with the modern classroom and technologically advanced students, individuals must begin to see new things as literature and analyze those things in a similar manner.
Baron, Dennis. “From Pencils to Pixels: The Stages of Literary Technologies.” Writing Material. Ed. Evelyn Tribble. New York. 2003. 35- 52.