Timing is everything, and for this Comics Academe, I wanted to share another type of Comics Academe submission: Con Diaries. Just like our WWAC con diaries, Comics Academe con diaries are a way for contributors to share their experiences when attending conventions that are organized by academic organizations in comics studies — like ICAF or…
Letterers: Jill Gerber on the Unsung Heroes of Comics in the Classroom
When it comes to using comics in the classroom, letterers are truly the unsung heroes of the medium, according to educator Jill Gerber. In our earlier Comics Academe interview focusing on how the use of comics has evolved as a literary teaching tool, Gerber, an award-winning educator and consultant, explains that lettering is one of…
Comics Academe: The Evolution of Comics in Education Educators
To quote Jill Gerber, “In an increasingly image-driven culture, it is important that we purposefully incorporate visual literacy into our curriculum and equip our students, not only to be better consumers of information, but also for them to effectively communicate to a global community.” Gerber is an award-winning, published author and longtime educator. In this…
Before the Hulk was Green: Pop Culture Literacy in the Composition Classroom
(This article was adapted from a presentation given at the TYCA-Northeast Conference in Fall of 2012) What is this professor talking about? I teach at a community college, which means I teach a lot of introductory classes. I can assume I’ll be teaching several sections of Standard Freshman Composition every Fall, and Writing about Literature…
Comics and YA: How Shelving Creates Access
I think that I’ve got a pretty great job. On any given day I could be helping a teen find a read-a-like for her favorite fantasy series, telling another teen that no they can’t eat buffalo wings at the public computers, doing a Harry Potter-inspired craft program, or reminding someone that not everything you read…
Comics Academe Roundtable: Teaching Bitch Planet
Since the publication of the first issue of Bitch Planet by Kelly Sue DeConnick and Valentine De Landro in December of 2014, many people, inside and outside of academia, have pointed to the comic, the related backmatter and essays, and even the community that has formed around it–as embodied by the many tattoos of the…
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being (in Comics Academia)
June 2015. The run-up to my first conference abroad as an official comics scholar — and I don’t want to go. I’m panic-crying after reading a chain of emails which, on the face of it, have little to do with me. Short background: we were supposed to have a panel on Charlie Hebdo. A month before…
Windows and Mirrors: Youth Media Awards and Diversity in Library Collections
I have a confession to make as a youth services librarian: I generally don’t put a lot of stock in ALA’s Youth Media Awards. The Youth Media Awards cover several areas and niches in children’s and young adult publishing, but the primary ones are the Michael C. Printz Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature,…
YA? Why Not?! What Does “YA” Mean Anyway?
If somehow you’ve emerged from a Cold War-esque bunker or have otherwise been under a rock for the last ten to fifteen, you may be wondering, “What is all of this ‘YA’ hullabaloo anyway and why would I care?” If you are, that’s okay! YA as a category has seen an “explosion of books” in…
Mom’N’Pop Culture: Gamification vs. Standardized Testing in Elementary Education
There have been some noticeable changes in my daughter’s behavior now that her third grade teachers are powering into the second half of the school year and preparing students for the state assessment exams. She’s stressed. My little person of independence asks to spend more time cuddling in the evenings before bed. She has the…
Comics Academe: Teaching Ms. Marvel – Part One
Last semester I taught the first volume of Ms. Marvel in my honor’s multicultural literature class. Ms. Marvel was perfect for my class, which centered on how minorities used fantastic fiction to show disfranchisement and how old tropes become new when filtered through a different perspective. Superman and Batman are iconic, and that’s a lot…
Don’t Destroy the Brain: Corpse Talk Lets History Be Gross
Running in British weekly comics magazine The Phoenix, now seeing its second collected volume released by David Fickling Books, the conceit of Corpse Talk is that the reader is viewing a talk show. The host—the cartoonist—is visited by the dead bodies of big movers of the past, now deceased, and together they discuss important moments…