Abstract
This chapter examines the nexus of comics and digital work in the context of both secondary and post-secondary instruction with adolescents. The chapter draws upon the qualitative and self-study centered approach of the author as teacher and as reader, with implications related to the future possibilities for instruction. In this case, the context is centered in literacy as the author has worked with students over the course of approximately seventeen years to foster deeper connections to reading, writing, and composing.
TopPositionality
The author is an educator with an interest in the possible, including speculative notions of what could be accomplished and encouraged in education, as well as an interest in the mythic from a background as a comics reader, film viewer, and member of religious community. At the same time, the author draws on his own history in academia and formal education as one who has experienced his own disconnection from school life and practices, having at one time been a high school dropout and, at present, is serving as a high school English teacher who has a Ph.D. in literacy. The author is also a constant reader of the comics and visual form, given the use of transmedial texts that are endemic to his age/generation. The author’s actions in the classroom world are centered around teaching, storytelling, and finding ways to merge beliefs with everyday interactions. This network of interactions with texts that occur not by prescriptive means but with a sense of agency and choice on the part of the reader are a central component of Street’s (2006) conceptualization of the dimensions along which engagement with literacy practices occur. Though the school space and home space are not always clearly delineated, with some interactions and practices spilling over, there is space in this conceptualization for asking about conceptions of power and autonomy for students, including the ways in which students take up secret spaces and practices in classrooms, as when a student disengages with the intended curriculum and engages in some spontaneous and even subversive sense of creating.
The author is a reader, thinker, believer, teacher, and student, all at the same time – and, moreover in terms of spirituality, the author is a devoted seeker of truth who wants to help others on their journey. This lens as a thinker and practitioner is often influenced by personal beliefs. It with a careful sensibility that the author attempts to mitigate any sense of bias that the author brings along with this background, embracing and honoring a variety of worldviews. The author embarks on this journey each day from the framework of a scholar who is invested in finding pathways for reading and writing experiences for others.
Essentially, the author’s identity as a person and as a scholar is rooted in an intertextual array of experiences and concepts. His interest in religion led him to earn a Bachelor’s degree in a religion-based field in the early 2000s, and his love of graphic novels and visual literacy led to a development of a reading-focused dissertation, culminating in a PhD. The author teaches about reading, but the elements of what the author believes about God and universe serve as a set of ethical praxes for instructional life and inform a sensibility of comics reading and film viewing that draws upon a distinct set of interpretive and experiential tools.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Graphic Novel: A prestige term that usually applies to a larger work in comics form, often used as a way of legitimizing the medium.
Web Comics: The web-based method of storytelling, drawing upon comics features for building stories.
Comics: A universal term for the mingling of visual and verbal across a particular narrative form, either print or digital.
Graphica: An umbrella term that often refers to visual ways of communicating.
Digital Literacy: The ways in which readers navigate (and create) using technological tools. This approach includes reading, writing, and composing.
Visual Literacy: A means of considering communication using pictorial form.
Transmedia: A field of examination that considers the ways in which stories are told and considered across media forms, including film, television, music, toys, and more.