Stock Characters, Take 2 -- The Vice
4/9/2014
by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com If you managed to miss my recent post of a student's visual research and note-taking of the "Il Dottore" character from Commedia dell'Arte, you should definitely check it out. In that post, my student, Hannah, does an unbelievable job of visually rendering the character in a way that makes sense to her, and consequently, to us. Here, Marina has done a similar visual piece dealing with the Vice, that prankster from medieval morality plays that was such a thorn in everyone's side. The great thing in having students learn about these characters is that it opens their eyes to a whole tradition of drama that they wouldn't have previously known about. We sometimes like to think that everything will be fine if we manage to cover a Shakespeare play each year, but why not give students an opportunity to explore the traditions that Shakespeare would have drawn upon? The Vice was originally a fairly serious character on the medieval stage but really grabbed a foothold when playwrights realized the extent to which he could be played for comic effect, terrorizing both good and evil characters by grabbing them, poking them, or otherwise harrassing them. As I've mentioned previously, our examination of stock characters is specifically in connection with a unit on Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist. However, don't for a second think that it's not a useful activity with which to preface Shakespeare. Understanding the Vice can help us better understand the Falstaff of 1 Henry IV or the diabolical Iago. You might not think to connect these characters immediately but they both owe to the tradition of the Vice. I love how Marina's work is filled with descriptive adjectives that get at the contradictions inherent in the Vice, because it is these contradictions that Shakespeare ended up developing in order to create fully realized, three-dimensional characters in the likes of Falstaff and Iago. Just take a look at Kenneth Branagh--whom your students know only as either Gilderoy Lockhart or the director of Thor--in this brilliant clip as he does that ever-so-Vice-like thing of letting the audience in on what he's about to do. I plan on showing a few more of these to you, and I really hope you'll take me up on my offer to show me similar work that your students are doing. We would love to feature it here at Comics in Education!
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by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com When I was growing up and learning about literature, I often thought that a two-dimensional character was somehow less important than a three-dimensional one. I think the problem was my definition of "important." Hamlet, for instance, was to me a living, breathing character with a complex personality and the ability to grow and (eventually) adapt. He seemed far more "important" than the likes of Rozencrantz and Guildenstern, stock characters that struck me as interchangeable as Tweedledum and Tweedledee. For some reason, you see, I felt the need to judge stock characters because of their inherent two-dimensionality. Reflecting on this now, I can see that it was a bit of an odd way of looking at things. What it may have prevented me from initially doing, however, is recognizing the importance of stock characters in a drama, and how central they were to the tradition of the theatre when it was reawakened in Europe after its centuries-long slumber. Perhaps studying Dario Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist has reminded me again of the tradition of mystery, miracle, and morality plays so important to Western drama, the hints of which you can see in the plays of Shakespeare (Egeus, for instance, in A Midsummer Night's Dream or Hotspur in Henry the Fourth, Part I quickly come to mind). The latter play makes far more sense, in fact, when you understand the theatre that preceded Shakespeare. So the other day I decided that I would give stock characters their due. I asked students to choose such a character from Fo's play, from either the tradition of Commedia dell'Arte or the medieval stage, or from the history of film (provided that at least three instances of such a stock character could be demonstrated). Here's what my student, Hannah, came up with. She chose "Il Dottore" from the tradition of Commedia dell'Arte: What I love about this one is not just how the mask is front and centre as it should be, or that the illustration / note-taking has the appropriate symbolic touches that are connected with the character (the bottle, since "Il dottore" drinks too much; the book because he is a caricature of higher learning, etc.), but because the overall effect of the illustration is imposing. It imposes itself on us precisely in the same way that the "Il dottore" stock character imposes himself on other characters (typically those who are in love). I think there's a definite usefulness in doing this activity in advance of studying a unit on drama and posting the resulting work around the room. That way, when your students encounter a character who seems two-dimensional, they have a visual repository to draw on that will get them up out of their seats and scouring posters of "Il dottore" or "The Vice" or even "The Rebellious Teenager" I'd love for you to try this activity and send some examples of what your students come up with. I'd be happy to feature them on the site! by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com This is just the sort of thing I love about comics... I think I was destined to come across Amy Crabtree--not just because I love all manner of comics and visual art but because I also happen to appreciate a good vegetable maki set. Amy Crabtree is a UK graphic artist with a passion for Japanese culture and you can see these Eastern influences both in her art and in the subject matter of her book, How to Make Sushi. Here is Amy talking about her labour of love: "How to Make Sushi" is a comic-style recipe book that guides you through the process of making sushi at home. The whole book is in comic format, and the recipes really work. The book has just been published worldwide on Amazon Kindle, and is also available as a printed comic. Any practical instructions could be communicated using a comic - maybe instructions for flatpack furniture should be drawn as comics to make the process less frustrating! If you're already smitten with Amy's cool book projects, you should know that she's the owner of the T-shirts and accessories brand, "Cakes with Faces," specialising in fun and colourful designs, many of them involving food (and cakes) with faces. You can also find Amy on Twitter, where she hangs out as @cakeswithfaces, or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/cakeswithfaces. Her ebook is available here from the Kindle Store, and the printed version is available as a gift set with a rolling mat and chopsticks from http://www.cakeswithfaces.co.uk (worldwide shipping available). Three Visual Gems from the Past Week
4/8/2014
by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com I'm always looking for things to inspire my students--to get them to think about the ever-more-visual landscapes they inhabit and how they can successfully negotiate them. Over the past week or so I've come across three that can inspire any educator to encourage similar things in their own classrooms. Book Spine Poetry As a lover of both found and concrete minimalist poetry, I think this would make for a great library activity, provided of course that you have an open-minded librarian who's cool with short term book loans for a purpose other than reading in the traditional sense. The students could even do such an activity at home and photograph their creations for presentation or display. Erasure Poetry Here, the poet, Karen Massey, has taken a page -- literally -- right out of The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins and created a found poem through a process of erasure. It strikes me as a kind of variation on visual note-taking and visual brainstorming, not by virtue of furious addition but liberal subtraction until the essence is arrived at and the poem is born. Shape Poetry Shape poetry is nothing new--the tradition has been around for centuries--but it's good to be reminded that some of our finest poets have appreciated the possibilities of the visual rendering of poetry--of the marriage of the textual and the visual. Dylan Thomas didn't avoid bringing together these two things, and we should encourage our students to see the possibilities afforded in the above examples to foster their creativity and visual imagination. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com Whenever I read a graphic memoir in which travel plays a small but significant role, I'm reminded of Julie Delporte's Journal. I'm reminded of it, I think, because of what Delporte is dealing with when she leaves her native Montreal behind for a semester to attend the Centre for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction, Vermont. Delporte is trying to come to terms with a painful breakup and to this end is charting its course in her journal, so the move brings with it a complex mix of both anxiety and relief. In this way, Journal underscores a profoundly important point about travel, which is that its purpose can sometimes be to work out those things troubling the traveler, rather than simply to be a way to embrace a new experience. It's as though the physical action of travel presents us with an opportunity to pause, to think, to consider, and to avoid us having to feel that we are doing nothing to sort out our own problems. It's remarkable in Journal how often Delporte, despite travelling from Montreal to Vermont, feels compelled to go for a walk in her new environment. Sometimes she can only be creative when she is moving and loses all motivation to draw when she returns home. And so whereas some memoirs show us the importance of what's happening in the place being visited and others show us the importance of why the journey is being undertaken to begin with, books like Journal reveal to us a third category, in which what authors brings with them on their respective journeys is of preeminent importance. For educators reading this post, it strikes me that Delporte's work represents a fascinating approach we might encourage our own students to pursue, especially when it comes to the problems they face in their daily lives. By keeping an ongoing journal in which they write, illustrate, or otherwise represent their struggles, achievements, setbacks, and triumphs, students can construct for themselves a visual biography that shows them, at any given moment, how they are dealing with life's challenges. All thanks to this wonderful little gem by Julie Delporte. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com Reflections on two wonderful graphic novels as the CITE Conference approaches My afternoon workshop for the Conference of Independent Teachers of English is only a week away and I'm still finalizing the roster of graphic travelogues and graphic memoirs featuring travel that I plan to share with them. You'll know from my previous posts that I'll be talking about Guy Delisle's Pyongyang and that I'm also planning to discuss Florent Chavouet's Tokyo on Foot. Delisle, as I mentioned in my previous blog, teaches us about how graphic travel writing is at its best when the reader senses that the place is telling its story as much as the writer is, and when the narrative has a humanity about it that is rooted in a kind of fundamental honesty of experience. Precisely the same is true of Chavouet in his exquisite graphic trip-tik, where Tokyo comes alive in everything from the exciting to the merely interesting to the mundane. For some reason I got to wondering about whether I could find two graphic memoirs dealing with travel that on the surface seem completely different, but are actually quite similar, especially when it comes to the question of what they teach us. Of course, that still doesn't quite explain how I possibly got it in my head to pair Sarah Leavitt's Tangles and the Ricard Brothers' Beirut 1990. But here it goes... Travel might not seem of particular importance to Tangles until we begin to consider its significance in the broader context of the story. In Tangles, Leavitt tells of her mother's gradual deterioration over the course of eight years at the hands of Alzheimer's Disease, and of the trips Leavitt makes from her home in Vancouver to care for her mom in Fredericton. When she travels to the place of her childhood, however, Leavitt doesn't quite remember everything about it--like, for instance, the streets one takes to get to the river--but that's also when she learns her mother can't remember either. Whether it's these trips back home or meeting her parents on a vacation in Mexico, Leavitt's journeys become a metaphor for her efforts both to preserve the memories of her mother as she was before the disease took hold, while also chronicling what is happening to her. In both these literal and figurative journeys, we see that at their core they are about more than Leavitt's relationship with her mother or family relationships in general. At their core, these journeys are about a particular quality that I consistently find in those who write graphic memoirs: a tremendous capacity for selfless human compassion. It is precisely this spirit of compassion that is at the heart of Beirut 1990. Traveling there as aid workers at the height of its civil conflict, almost on a kind of whim, the Ricard Brothers see beyond the conflict taking place and are able to appreciate the beauty of the city and its people. Alternating between scenes of violent conflict and moments of quiet reflection shared by the brothers, Beirut 1990 has something profound to say about what journeys can mean. Like Leavitt, the Ricard brothers come to understand the sense of helplessness that is the product of wanting desperately to preserve what is so very important to preserve. Like Leavitt, their struggle to make sense of it all, even after returning home from the conflict, is a testament to their compassion. Can't wait to share these graphic novels at the conference and to talk about these issues with CIS educators. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com A question that sometimes arises among students when I teach Othello is whether or not Iago bears more than a passing similarity to Batman's arch-nemesis, the Clown Prince of Crime--the Joker. I don't know who first came up with the idea of connecting these characters, but when my students initially mentioned it to me I found myself of two minds about it. When I'm of two minds about something I find it helps to sketch things out. So I turn to visual brainstorming to see if that helps resolve things: Let's see what you think... Well, I'm not sure that this exercise resolves the issue entirely. There are some similarities in the ways in which both characters delight in others' undoing. However, one thing that the exercise works out is that Iago may, in fact, be a kind of hybrid of Joker and Batman, preferring to operate from the shadows like the Dark Knight but dealing out death and destruction like the motiveless malignity that is at the heart of the Clown Prince. Give your students as many opportunities as possible to work through complex comparisons like the one above. Allow them free range to access their thoughts in this very visual way and it won't take long to begin paying dividends. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com I can remember having a really interesting conversation with Dr. Michael Best, with whom I taught a course called Shakespeare by Individual Study at the University of Victoria. This was back in 1995 when I was still a Ph.D. student there. In discussing Hamlet prior to teaching it, Dr. Best indicated that the entire play is actually summarized in its opening line: "Who's There?" Recently I was thinking about this again and decided to do a little visual brainstorming both to remember our conversation and to work a couple of things out for myself. You'll excuse my artistic mediocrity. It explains why I write graphic novels, I suppose, and don't illustrate them. Okay, so here are my scribbles... So, not too shabby, I suppose. That first line turns out to be a doozy, though.
So it's complicated, I suppose. But the visual brainstorming allows us to make sense of it a bit. It doesn't let us write it out in a coherent, five paragraph essay, but it does let us get our scribblings down and begin to make sense of things. That's a pretty cool thing, though, I think. So, I had this idea for a website...
4/6/2014
by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com ...I just didn't realize the response it would get. With the wonderful response I received from my workshops at Reading for the Love of It, and with my students doing so many interesting things using the visual, I thought there might be a need for a website like Comics in Education. Of course, I had no idea how extensive that need would be. Today is April 6. Exactly one month ago, on March 6, I launched www.comicsineducation.com, with 96 people stopping by. As of this morning, the site has reached 100,000 page views. And no, it's not a typo. My intention was to launch a site that could be a free repository of insights, ideas, and activities related to the use of visual narrative in the K-12 classroom. This is exactly what Comics in Education will continue to be as long as you need it. Thank you for your notes, email, Twitter follows, favorites and retweets. These are all very much appreciated. And please continue to let me know about people, places, and products we can be featuring on the blog. And now two small requests... Please consider joining "Our Supporters" or the "Corporate Support" page. Those who have joined can tell you that what it amounts to is free advertising. People get to see you, find out a little bit about your work in comics, or education, or both, and then can click on your icon to your website, Facebook, or Twitter account. There is no cost for this. Comics in Education is not expecting anything from you other than your support. So, we'd like to thank all of you for the great support you have given us so far. It's come from far and wide, indeed from all over the world... And sometimes, as it turns out, from closer to home. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com Yet Another Great Comic Book Shop that Is So Much More... In one of my first posts on this blog, I talked at length about Strange Adventures, The Beguiling, and The Dragon--three of the best comic book stores in Canada. From that post, you probably gathered that I like few things better than losing myself in a good shop for the better part of an afternoon. Another gem in this regard is Happy Harbor Comics, an Eisner-nominated store in Edmonton whose reputation as both a comic book store and a community builder is second to none. Happy Harbor is a great store in its own right, but it does considerable work in the community not only to raise the profile of comics but support local schools and libraries. A recent example of this was the appearance of owner Jay Bardala and two professional artists at a school in rural Alberta. Here, they shared with students the complex process of how a comic book goes from the mind of a writer to the store where you purchase it through a whole team of talented people that help bring the story to life. But Happy Harbor does so much more. They help to support Alberta Literacy through their 24 hour Comics Day in October and work with Edmonton Big Brothers and Big Sisters through their 12 hour Comic Challenge each March. They're an annual donor to the Edmonton Public School Foundation and fund raise for the Edmonton Food Bank through a variety of activities, like movie nights and a Free Comic Book day. They've even recently started a Cover Artists for Charity program. So, if you live in the greater Edmonton area or happen to be visiting, you'd do well to pay Happy Harbor Comics a visit. After all, there's nothing better than spending an afternoon in a comic book shop... ...Especially when you know it's one that really cares about its community. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com Books that Provide Teachers with the Ideas and Activities for Teaching Visual Narrative in the K-12 ClassroomOnce teachers have read a few comics for their own enjoyment, done some additional reading about the genre, and found a good graphic novel to use with their students, only one thing remains. They need to do some reading about how to teach the genre to young people. Below are four excellent resources that teachers can use when they want to bring visual narrative to the K-12 classroom.
by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com When people ask me how I started writing graphic novels, my answer is usually one word: "Timeline." When they ask me how I was inspired to write for the Rubicon / Scholastic series, my answer is always two words: "My son." When my son was very young he was fascinated by Ancient Pompeii...not just the fateful events of August 24-25, 79 CE, but the vibrant city bustling with life that preceded it. He was similarly fascinated by gladiators and fullers and senators and emperors, and he was so interested in the people, places, sights, and sounds of the ancient city that we had to do something about it. So, we decided to take a trip to the Canadian Museum of History in Ottawa/Hull, where the plaster casts were being exhibited. These were the same plaster casts that were created by archaeologists who injected plaster into the air pockets of the volcanic debris that had hardened over the course of more than 1600 years. By doing so, the archaeologists were able to bring to life the forms of those who perished in one of the worst pyroclastic surges in the history of Volcanic eruptions. When we got back home from our trip, we watched videos and read books and talked about what we had seen. When I asked my son what more we should do about it, he said, "You should write a graphic novel about Pompeii." So that's what I did. What follows, then, are the books I wrote for the Timeline series, entirely inspired by my son's self-directed learning. Writing them was tremendous fun and I could always count on a certain someone to provide me with an endless assortment of ideas about how these stories should be told. TIMELINEWith adventures that take place throughout history—and into the future, Timeline is packed with heroes and villains that will capture the imaginations of both boys and girls. Students love them because they are cool and teachers love them because they are motivational and packed with non-fiction learning. Each title blends a fictional protagonist with real historical characters in a unique story that teaches children about an important moment, time period, or event from the past. The series is also available in the United Kingdom under Oxford's Treetops Graphic Novels brand. For a review of the series have a look at Jared Robinson's review, "Rubicon's Timeline Series...Timeless!"
by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com I had the great fortune of having my kids--who absolutely adore Stan Lee--get their picture taken with the legend when he made an appearance at the 2012 Fan Expo in Toronto. It's nearly two years later and they still haven't stopped smiling. Imagine my delight, then, in discovering the Stan Lee Excelsior Award, a prize given to one of eight graphic novels each year as selected by the real experts on comics and graphic novels: teenagers! Here's the description of the award from the website: The Stan Lee Excelsior Award is the only nationwide book award for graphic novels and manga - where kids aged 11-16 choose the winner by rating each book as they read it! You'll be pleased to know that the organizer of this award is Paul Register, the librarian at the Ecclesfield School in Sheffield, England. Ecclesfield specializes in visual and performing arts and I can't help but think that it shares a kindred spirit with my own institution, The York School in Toronto. As noted in the award description, Stan the Man himself has endorsed the award, and it's such a great way to help foster and promote the idea that a school--an academic institution--sees comics and graphic novels as worthy of study, appreciation, and recognition. So hats off to Paul Register and the Ecclesfield school for the Stan Lee Excelsior Award. Excelsior! by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com Everything I know I learned from comics, so I owe it to comics to learn about its history! At the 2014 Reading for the Love of It Conference in Toronto, my first session was entitled "Everything I Know I Learned from Comics." If that's the case--and really, it is--I think I owed it to comics to try and figure out where the tradition of visual narrative actually comes from. Of course, for this, one needs to be armed with Scott McCloud's Understanding Comics, a work whose importance to the genre cannot be underestimated. So, the next time anyone casts aspersions at your idea of introducing visual narrative into the classroom because it's somehow a "lesser" genre than poetry, the novel, or short fiction, tell them that it actually has a tradition extending much further back than the written or even the spoken word. Better yet, just show them this... Historical Tradition When we think about comics and graphic novels, we should think about them in the broader context of visual narrative. Visual narrative is telling a story in whole or in part using visual images, like illustrations or photographs. If we think about comics and graphic novels in this way, we can more easily recognize them as the product of a tradition that extends much further back than the tradition of writing. Cave of Altamira, 20000-35000 BCE The Cave of Altamira in Spain is known as the Sistine Chapel of Cave Art. Its depictions present a breathtaking visual narrative of the reality of life in Ancient Spain. The dynamic movement and energy of the illustrations tell us not only how ancient man perceived the natural world and its creatures, but how he felt about them. Taken together, these illustrations form a visual narrative that tells us an important story of early man, and serves as one of the most important examples of our species' ability to tell its stories with visual imagery. Tutankhamun's Tomb, c. 1323 BCE We owe a great deal to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. This ancient artifact containing a combination of three different language systems, gave rise to the field of Egyptology. When we look at ancient hieroglyphics, like those found in the Tomb of Tutankhamun, we see a fascinating early example of visual narrative. Told through visual imagery that contains representations of human beings, animals, and symbols, ancient hieroglyphics are sequential art of the highest order. The Bayeux Tapestry, c. 1077 The Battle of Hastings and what it decided changed the course of European history. William the Conqueror and his Norman army crossed the Channel and won a decisive victory over the English, killing their King, Harold, when an arrow struck him in the eye. Perhaps even more remarkable than the Battle of Hastings, though, is how it was commemorated in the town of Bayeux. Woven into what has come down to us as a 70m long fabric is the Bayeux Tapestry, perhaps the most visually stunning graphic story in the world. A combination of image and text, it tells the story of the Norman conquest beginning before the Battle of Hastings and extending through to William's coronation. Stations of the Cross, c. 1600 CE Many of us are confronted with a rather profound work of visual storytelling whenever we step foot within a church. The work in question is a common installation called "The Stations of the Cross," which generally came to be recognized as such in the fifteenth century. These stations tell the story of the execution of Jesus of Nazareth and are often arranged around a church as either inscription-bearing sculptures or plaques, or, in some instances, stained-glass windows. Each station bears a title, such as "Jesus falls the first time," or "Jesus is stripped of his garments." As has been noted of William Hogarth's "A Rake's Progress," the stations effectively form a storyboard or visual narrative of an important sequence of events in a person's life. "A Rake's Progress," 1732-33 CE "A Rake's Progress" is a series of eight paintings completed by William Hogarth in 1732-33 which were then produced as engravings for printing in 1735. They tell the story of Tom Rakewell, a wasteful "rake" who inherits a small fortune, wastes it through frivolous living, ends up in Fleet Prison, and then Bedlam hospital. Because "A Rake's Progress" effectively tells the story of a character's rise and fall in visual form, it has been thought of as an early example of a graphic story (Scott McCloud) and even a storyboard (Alan Parker). Q. What Do You Get When Graphic Travel Narrative Meets Visual Brainstorming? A. Tokyo on FootÂ
4/3/2014
by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com This is how an artist should travel...If you haven't read Florent Chavouet's Tokyo on Foot, then you've been missing out on a uniquely rewarding experience. Imagine you're an artist with a gift for sharing your own unique perspective on things, and you find yourself in Tokyo with time on your hands and art materials at your disposal. If you're Chavouet, you end up drawing Tokyo. But not the stereotypical, Western view of Tokyo as a city of bright lights, Buddhist temples and Karaoke bars.... Instead, imagine that you draw the real Tokyo. By recording what he sees, from the profound to the mundane, Chavouet does what so many great graphic travel writers do. As with my post the other day on Guy Delisle, Chavouet presents us with an honest, insightful look at the sights and sounds of the place he is visiting, perhaps without even realizing at the time what a profound effect these sights and sounds--and his recording of them--will have on his development as an artist. You see, it's precisely because Chavouet records everything (i.e. that he doesn't make a judgment or shape Tokyo into merely what he wants or expects it to be) that he is so successful in Tokyo on Foot. This is precisely the idea we should encourage with our students when they are trying to put their ideas down onto paper in front of them. Tell them that you want to see what they are thinking...really see it. They might just end up giving you something like this. Thank you, Florent Chavouet. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com ...Apparently that they understand something about the elements of farce.I know that as this series of blog posts on visual brainstorming goes along, you'll eventually become convinced that I've hired a professional artist to create the work I'm sharing with you. This latest example is courtesy of Grade 11 York School student, Kersti Muzzafar, and it appears she's taken to heart the school's motto: "Be yourself. Be great."
I mean, this is pretty great. It's especially great, though, when you look at it a bit more closely and realize that Kersti has managed to capture the different kinds of characters, themes, and issues that would make an appearance in a farce: the fool, the inflexible character, the older man who lusts after the younger woman, disguise, deceit--it's all there. This is a short post today and it comes with a simple message: Try as early as possible in the school year to learn these things about your students: what they can do, how they can express themselves, and how they interpret what we ask of them. I didn't expect Kersti to take this home and turn it into what was obviously a labour of love... But that's what happens when we encourage our students to be themselves. They end up being great. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com Before You Start the Play, You Might Want to Show Them the Impact Shakespeare Continues to Have on Us.When it comes to teaching Shakespeare, I have done just about everything in order to begin a given unit. I've read with the class, had them read alone or in partners, showed them film clips, had them act out the opening scene, went on at length about the context of Shakespeare's plays, and even, for Othello, introduced them to the branch of psychology that deals with the science of lying courtesy of a very amusing video courtesy of the Science Show. Doing any of these things can lead to a successful start to your unit, but there's an even better approach I think. If you want to convince kids that Shakespeare is still having an impact, and that both he and the time in which he wrote--the Renaissance--are still relevant today, show them the video below. It's only a couple of minutes long, but if you've never seen it before, I think it will leave an impression. As someone with both a profound appreciation of visual narrative and academic training as a ludologist (someone who studies the history and theory of games in literature and culture), this video and a host of others like it show that Shakespeare still speaks to young people--if not always in the Early Modern English with which he penned his plays then in the language of square blocks that has become one of the most popular digital pastimes among young adolescents today--especially boys. And let's face it--Minecraft absolutely rules when it comes to developing a student's capacity for creativity and self-expression. It's not unusual for me to come home from work and see that my son has constructed a fortress or underground complex that I can't even begin to figure out. And it usually comes with a story--therein lies the key. I know that you can already begin to see the possibilities--class projects involving set designs, staging, and the like. So I'll leave you to check out www.minecraft.net for yourselves...
Who knows...maybe you're a closet Minecraft superstar in the making. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com In the End, There Are Five Books You Need...It is incumbent upon teachers wanting to incorporate comics into their classroom practice to familiarize themselves with the resources below. These are among the finest books about the genre of visual narrative and will help to provide a foundation for educators wishing to explore comics and graphic novels with their students. Understanding Comics, by Scott McCloudThere are lots of great books written about comics, their history, and the world of visual narrative. Perhaps nowhere else, however, does an author make these things more accessible and engaging than Scott McCloud does in Understanding Comics. McCloud makes the case for looking at comics as part of a historical tradition, examines why the genre speaks to us, and provides readers with the kind of insight into visual storytelling that is difficult to findelsewhere. Understanding Comics has been consistently regarded since its publication as the preeminent work of its kind, and is often the only or among the few works on comics to be found on the bookshelves of K-12 educators. Comics and Sequential Art by Will EisnerIt's always great when you can get a look into the mind of a genius, regardless of what genre you happen to be exploring. This is what happens in Comics and Sequential Art by the late Will Eisner. Taking us through the principles of graphic storytelling by drawing upon his own work, Eisner not only reveals essential principles of the genre, but at the same time shows us the peerless talent that would give us works like The Spirit and A Contract with God. There's a reason why the most esteemed awards in the field of visual narrative are called the Eisner's, and this insightful look at comics helps in no small measure to show why this is. The Comic Book History of Comics, by Fred Van Lente and Ryan DunlaveyFred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey tell the remarkable history of graphic novels in comic book form. With an introduction by Tom Spurgeon, The Comic Book History of Comics looks at the work of some of the quintessential figures in the history of visual narrative, including Jack Kirby, R. Crumb, Harvey Kurtzman, Alan Moore, Stan Lee, Will Eisner, Fredric Wertham, Roy Lichtenstein, Art Spiegelman, Herge, and Osamu Tezuka. The authors cover a wide range of topics, but the strength of the book is its ability to provide a comprehensive overview with engaging details in an economy of space. Reviewers have noted that both the concept and execution of what Van Lente and Dunlavey undertake are nothing short of remarkable. Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know, by Paul GravettThis reader-friendly, highly visual history of graphic novels by Paul Gravett does a great job of looking at the language of the comics medium, the history of the form, and the work of some of its greatest practitioners. The book also looks at the impact of Japanese manga on North American comics, as well as the influence of European comics in translation. Of special interest to educators will be Gravett's examination of the wealth of themes explored in contemporary graphic novels and the trials the genre has had to undergo in achieving recognition. Making Comics, by Scott McCloudIn Understanding Comics, Scott McCloud opens up the reader's eyes to the world of visual narrative, but in Making Comics he focuses on writing and illustrating--everything from the broadest conceptual considerations needed in planning a visual narrative to the finest details. Indeed, McCloud's explorations include not just the necessary tools of the trade, but an examination of the various ways in which people become involved in the comics industry. Once again, McCloud returns as his cartoon self and uses his wonderful sense of humour and genuine insight into the medium to show readers how they might undertake to become a maker of comics. All in all, it is a more than worthy successor to both Understanding Comics and Reinventing Comics. Over the course of the next few months, I'll be sharing a number of graphic novels that I consider must-reads for those educators wanting to give serious treatment to the genre in the contemporary classroom. These works may not always be at the top of everyone's reading list, but each will have the capacity to make a very real impact on teaching and learning in the 21st-century classroom. Of the books I read in 2013, this one had the most to say to teachers. Though written a few years ago now, the English translation was published this past year, and we should be nothing short of thankful for it. In this critically-acclaimed work, Davodeau recalls the experience of learning the craft of wine making in the Loire Valley from vintner, Richard Leroy. At the same time, Davodeau gets Leroy to learn the art of writing, drawing, and publishing graphic novels. The story is brilliantly told, and from it we come away with a genuine understanding of how much people from different backgrounds and occupations can learn from one another by seeing what is actually involved in what they do. I would strongly encourage teachers to read this graphic novel. It strikes me that Davodeau and Leroy engage in precisely the kind of authentic learning we want for our students. For instance, it's one thing to know that winemakers use barrels and that barrels are made by coopers. It's another thing to watch as Leroy pays a visit to the cooper's and hangs out there all day making sure the barrels are made just so while Davodeau looks on nonplussed. Indeed, both men learn from one another how passionate they are about their respective professions and how this is a fundamental quality they both share. Talking with students about this graphic novel and sharing it with them is important, I think, in preparing them to be initiates for the world of lived experience. For more information on The Initiates, have a look at the following links: Why Teach Comics?
4/2/2014
by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com Just in case you didn't have reason enough already... In a lecture called "Fostering Inquiry One Comic Book at a Time" that I delivered at the 2014 Reading for the Love of It Conference, I discussed the importance of teaching visual narrative in the K-12 classroom. What I talked about, though, was actually inspired by a pair of articles I wrote for the Sequart Organization at the start of 2013. Here's what I said in "Changing Attitudes to Comics in the Classroom:" In 2010, I assigned a rather curious task to a group of twenty-two graduate students at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) while teaching a course called New Literacies: Making Multiple Meanings. The students included K-12 educators with a range of experiences and backgrounds, as well as those working in education in a non-teaching capacity. The purpose of the activity was to determine what they saw as the basic skills needed to access “new literacies.” Pairs of students were assigned a given literacy, and then came up with a thoughtful analysis of the skills that would be needed for someone to possess, for example, information literacy or health literacy. The following week, just as one might do in a middle school classroom, I had the students fill up a blackboard with the skills they came up with for their given literacy. Then we simply circled the skills that appeared over and over again. The following five were repeated multiple times:
Given that 21st-century students in our K-12 classrooms spend a considerable amount of time immersed in a visual culture outside the classroom, it seems absurd to avoid teaching visual narrative to academic students as they develop the above-mentioned skills. Having students navigate through different genres and across different platforms of learning as they critically think about and make connections between poetry, novels, short fiction, visual narrative, epistolary writing, discussion boards, blogs, and hypertext fiction seems like a no-brainer. Are students’ self-awareness and metacognition really better served by avoiding comics and graphic novels in the academic English classroom? Isn’t visual narrative an ideal starting point in exploring with students both the traditional “print” genres of the novel, short fiction, poetry, and non-fiction, and the world of writing that hypertext and the web has opened up for all of us? If the skills that my students identified are crucial ones for access to the range of 21st-century literacies our students need, and if studying visual narrative helps foster these skills, we would be remiss if we kept comics and graphic novels out of our classrooms. Interestingly enough, the five skills listed above are ones that a certainly category of individuals has developed better than any other, and studying these individuals gives students insight into how to develop the skills themselves. What category would that be you might ask? Comic book superheroes. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com We don't just want to hear from you. We want others to hear from you as well!Having met so many of you already in such a short space of time, and having learned about what you're doing in the fields of comics and education, we thought we'd make you an offer you just couldn't refuse. If you happen to be doing work you'd like to share with visitors to our site, have insights about recent developments in the use of visual narrative in the classroom, or just feel strongly about the importance of comics in education, we'd be interested in having you write a guest blog for us. We're open to lots of creative and insightful ideas, and would love to feature the work of those who have a particular passion for these disciplines. Perhaps you have great ideas about using the works of a particular graphic novelist in your classroom. Maybe your students have drawn and written comics that really showcase the power of teaching them the visual. Perhaps you've read a comic or graphic novel in the past year that you feel has been undervalued in terms of its pedagogical utility. Whatever it is, we want to hear from you. Not only that, but we want others to as well. So send us a quick note by using our Contact Form. You can either send it to the one that goes to Comics in Education or the one that goes directly to me. You might want to do both, because I've set the electronic forms to thank you as though from a couple of familiar Marvel characters. Seriously, it's kind of adorable. by Glen Downey, Comics in Education, www.comicsineducation.com It's Authentic, It's Honest, It's Eminently Human...
If I had to explain what else prompts my particular interest in these books, however, and in the graphic travelogue in general, I think I'd say that I always find something fundamentally honest and eminently human about them. I often find these qualities to be in evidence in travel literature in general--whether it's Bill Bryson's self-deprecating humour in A Walk in the Woods or Jon Krakauer's efforts to wrestle with what happened during the ill-fated Everest expedition of 1996 in Into Thin Air. (I teach travel writing in the IB program at The York School in Toronto. We do Krakauer's landmark non-fiction novel as our text for the first unit of the course, having substituted it for Bryson's at the start of last year).
You'd think that travelling to a far away place and undergoing a remarkable experience might well end up being a potential recipe for overwriting. If the writer has been transformed by the place he or she traveled to because it was so meaningful, so profound, so unlike what anyone else must have ever experienced, then it's possible he or she would be too carried away with it all to write effectively. I suppose from time to time this happens, but I seldom find it does in the graphic travelogue. And I think, when it comes right down to it, that the answer lies in what a graphic travelogue is. It's a story about travel in words and pictures. And although it wouldn't be too difficult to manipulate the former to embellish one's story of travel, doing the same with the latter is much more difficult to pull off. A lot of what I find authentic about Delisle is how he depicts his reaction to a place--that way in Pyongyang that he shows himself just sort of standing or sitting in a place, looking around and shaking his head in mild to moderate disbelief. Sometimes with Krakauer and Bryson I can sense they're taking the odd liberty in their character descriptions (with Bryson, of course, it's nearly always to create humour). But with Delisle and with a number of other writers of the graphic travelogue, the visual nearly always helps me to believe in the authenticity of the experience they're sharing with me. And that, I think, is the great gift that graphic travel writing can give us. It's quite possible that graphic novels would not have taken the foothold they did in education were it not for the movement towards offering students, especially reluctant readers, a more visual experience of reading. This was not an exercise in oversimplifying curriculum; rather, it was one aimed at engaging a generation of readers who inhabited, and were conversant with, a far more visual culture than their parents. As Sir Ken Robinson notes in his landmark Ted Talk on Changing Educational Paradigms, gone are the days when students can simply be told to sit and do because that's what's good for them. Over the next few weeks I'll be sharing with you a number of series that I had the privilege to work on over the course of the last decade--series that sought to do what I've just described. Their success, however, should not simply end with us looking back contentedly and seeing that we've served the needs of reluctant readers. Graphical text and visual narrative must be more fully understood and embraced by teachers whose students are already highly motivated and able readers. So, here's the first series we'll look at: Rubicon / Harcourt's Boldprint: BoldprintBoldprint books are a series of titles designed with reluctant readers in mind. Built around engaging themes that have both an historical and contemporary focus, the books feature articles, poems, graphic stories, illustrations, and personal accounts that captivate young readers. In 2009, Boldprint received the Teacher’s Choice Award for Classroom Magazines from Learning Magazine. I wrote 6 titles for the series, which is also published in French as A La Une.
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Glen DowneyDr. Glen Downey is an award-winning children's author, educator, and academic from Oakville, Ontario. He works as a children's writer for Rubicon Publishing, a reviewer for PW Comics World, an editor for the Sequart Organization, and serves as the Chair of English and Drama at The York School in Toronto. If you've found this site useful and would like to donate to Comics in Education, we'd really appreciate the support!
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