Multiliteracies in ELA Classrooms

Although Frey and Fisher advocate for the use of graphic novels and other visual media as a means of engaging students in creative writing, they nonetheless seem to situate these texts as something other than or outside of academic text. That is, while graphic novels may mediate learning through their pop culture appeal to students, they still seem to be presented as forms of “low-brow” reading and not as legitimate literary texts themselves. Invariably, the written text is still privileged; indeed, the authors’ focus was on using graphic novels, a “form of popular culture,” to “[scaffold] writing techniques,  particularly dialogue, tone, and mood,” and even “[began] with the idea that graphic novels were comic books at best and a waste of time at worst” (24. This brings up questions of what exactly constitutes a legitimate and appropriate “academic text” for study in the English classroom and who has the power to make those decisions. Though this issue is beyond the scope of my post, I think these questions of legitimacy, access, and power imbalances in curriculum-planning bear further consideration.

To return to the article, while the authors’ focus seems to be on using students’ existing visual literacies to foster or reinforce more traditional forms of literacy, I would like to argue that not only should we treat graphic novels as literary texts in the classroom, but that we also need to explicitly teach visual literacy skills to our students. Although it is true that many students come into the classroom already possessing a different visual literacy skillset and perhaps have more confidence / practice in interpreting and encountering visual media, I think it is nevertheless important to give our students certain literary tools to enhance their reading, understanding, and analysis of graphic novels and their articulation thereof. Close reading and other analytical skills, after all, are transferrable across various literacies, and fostering students’ confidence and ability to analyze a graphic novel may also help them improve their analysis of more traditional forms of narrative, and vice versa.

Thus, I think if we are going to use graphic novels in the classroom, then we need to teach students the conventions of the discourse. At the very least, they should have an awareness of terminology and formal elements specific to graphic novel studies, elements  that authors use to influence readers’ perception of the work. Just as students doing a film study need to be aware of certain aspects of film (such as camera angles, zoom, story boards, etc) that mediate or even manipulate our emotional reactions, so too, students studying a graphic novel need to understand elements such as framing, gutter space, panels, etc. In other words, students must be given the tools to understand not only what is on the page and what the effects of the page are, but also how these effects are achieved.  The very nature of the graphic novel medium, after all, affects how we approach the narrative.

One significant difference between prose fiction and graphic novels, for example, is that graphic novels are a “unique hybrid of text and image” that demands a continuous shuffling of attention between the images and words (Rosen 3). Hirsch uses the term “biocularity” to highlight the “distinctive verbal-visual conjunctions that occur in comics,” and it is this biocularity that enables what Eisner termed “sequential art” (as qtd. in Whitlock 966). Specifically, sequential art conveys a story or information through presenting images in succession; however this “sequence of images [is] linked by juxtaposition, rather than chronological order,” and consequently, is able to “manipulate the time and space within a narrative” (Rosen 3). Thus, while capable of portraying a chronological account of events, comics are also able, at the same time, to depict simultaneous events by juxtaposing two different scenes. However, because comic panels are arranged side by side, there necessitates the existence of a “gutter,” or the negative space between the two images. These gutters, according to Whitlock, “fracture both time and space, offering a staccato series of frames” that require the reader to fill in the missing parts themselves and achieve narrative closure by “mentally [constructing] a continuous, unified reality” (970). Reading and analyzing graphic novels, therefore, require a different set of literacy skills, skills we should not automatically assume our students already have.

Works Cited

Frey, N. and Fisher, D. (2004). “Using Graphic Novels, Anime, and the Internet in an Urban High School.” The English Journal 93(3): 2004. 19-24. Print.

Rosen, Elizabeth, K. Apocalyptic Transformation: Apocalypse and the Postmodern Imagination. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2008. Print.

Whitlock, Gillian. “Autographics: the seeing ‘I’ of the comics.” Modern Fiction Studies 52.4(2006): 965-979. Project MUSE. Web. 20 Nov. 2009.

By: Katrina Lo

I do believe that using graphic novels in a class is a good idea. After all, as the Frey and Fisher article shows us, there may be great benefits! I think students are inherently comfortable with the genre of graphic novels because many have grown up with some comics (note: this doesn’t mean they necessarily have the tools to close- read and analyze them), but I do believe that since they are an element of the last few generations, there is something inherently ‘youthful’ and pop culture about graphic novels. They allow students to access similar themes that one can find in a novel, but they include a visual which adds a whole new dimension to meaning-making.  What I find is the most pertinent question is: how does one find meaning at the intersection of text and image? To me, finding meaning of a text would be knowing the mood and tone, recognizing themes, interpreting the text in my own way, think of the text in a philosophical way, and being able to talk about/write about stories with similar themes. I do believe that graphic novels facilitate in finding this type of meaning in a text simply because of the visuals.

My major question is how can a teacher enable students to effectively read graphic novels. Essentially, what are the tools one can give students to be able t analyze the stories in effective way- to further find the ‘real’ meaning in them. Do we teach them about symbolism and how its represented? Do we talk about why certain panels are larger than others and why the gutter is a certain size? Personally, I have not taught a graphic novel yet. I understand their immense value, but I am left wondering how to best approach in a real classroom context.

Catherine Howes – Blog Entry #1

I think Graphic novels are highly under utilized in our classrooms at this time. I find they are a great way to get our students to enhance their critical thinking skills in a different way. Unlike novels, which often give descriptions of the settings, characters and their actions, graphic novels give you a version of the setting and encourage readers to decipher meaning from the artwork. Instead of listening to adverbs to describe how a character is doing something, you have to look at the picture to get that cue. It requires visual literacy to be able to pick up hints and understanding by looking at certain characters and how they are portrayed in a frame. It leads to questions such as:

1)   Does the character’s actions/posture/place in the panel contradict the meaning of what he or she is saying?
2)   How can you tell and what kinds of clues lead you to this analysis?

This becomes interesting when you get a classroom of students with different cultural backgrounds. Depending on where the novel is produced shares a large part of the cultural history of the writer, the time and place he or she is writing in and how you might perceive it. We interpret body language differently from country to country. While one student might interpret a character as being sincere because of their body language, another student may perceive it as a clear sign of deception based on his or her own cultural upbringing. This can foster discussions on whether or not there are certain types of body language that are cross-cultural. Through getting our students to look at the same panels, we allow them to show their critical thinking skills as well as allowing us to get a deeper insight into how they see the world.

By incorporating this type of text in our classroom we also help our ELL learners. Text on a page requires knowledge of a particular language; it requires a strong vocabulary and understanding of grammar. Pictures, however, give students the ability to gain understanding from pictures and then relate that to the words to infer meaning. By giving them a visual literacy to work with, we can help them make the connections between words and their meaning.

When I was on my practicum, I attended a pro-d day presentation on visual thinking strategies that showed me how effective still images can be in helping students learn what it means to provide an analysis. The presenter, a woman from an art gallery, showed us a very complicated and busy image. The room full of teachers were asked only three questions: “What’s going on in this picture?”, “What do you see that makes you say that?”, “What more can we find?”. After each comment, the presenter would repeat back comments neutrally while pointing to the area of the image being described, and linking the comment to other comments. I was skeptical at first, but in the end I was extremely surprised at how quickly everyone moved towards making analytical comments. Approaching the image with a sense of wonder ended up being a pretty unintimidating way to approach a text, and having the presenter, a knowledgeable art gallery employee, repeat back comments created a feeling of being understood and validated. I later tried this same strategy with my students and I found it to be equally as effective.

While I enjoyed the article by Frey and Fisher and while I was happy to see that they found success with using graphic novels with grade 9 students, I wondered if the students could have further benefitted from the visual thinking strategies I learned about. I love the use of creative projects in the classroom, but I think that using visual media lends itself well to helping students also build analytical skills and thus, academic writing and speaking skills. Then again, I also wonder if I am wrong and there’s plenty of analytical thinking happening that the article cannot sufficiently showcase because, oddly enough, there are no images in this article about graphic novels and anime.

My last thought when reading this article was about the quote “A barrier for school use [of graphic novels] is the predominance of violence and sexual images in many graphic novels” (20). What is it about imagery that makes it so much more unacceptable than sex described in a novel, or murders in a play? Many of Shakespeare’s plays have violence and sex, yet it is perfectly acceptable to read in school. Would a graphic novel of Hamlet be acceptable to read? If so, would it be because Shakespeare wrote it? If not, would it be because it’s worse to see the violence than to read it?

Christina Lee – Blog Entry #1

Graphic novels may somewhat appear to be a recent phenomenon, but images have been telling powerful stories for over 40 centuries. It is exciting to see the gradual emergence of graphic novels in more and more English classrooms. Engaging with graphic novels is definitely an effective way to help students build the visual literacy needed for them to be successful critical thinkers in the 21^st century, a time where we are constantly bombarded by images with mixed messages. It is our duty as English teachers to encourage students to detach themselves from the perception that graphic novels simply provide “nice” visuals to the narrative, and start really looking at the images deeply and reading it as a part of the language of the medium. Ultimately, students can become more self-aware readers, especially in how they interact with the text by seeing their own and the author’s perspectives in conjunction with each other. Discussions will arise where students are able to make reasonable assumptions and challenge preconceptions in society. Graphic novels enable students to understand that expressing themselves and telling their stories are not limited to printed words on paper anymore, which will instill in them a newfound satisfaction and feeling of success in using images to convey ideas.

On a side note, another interesting type of graphic novel that may add a whole new dimension to visual literacy is the silent or wordless graphic novel, or simply, the picture book, as Shaun Tan likes to call them. Shaun Tan is an Australian author and illustrator known for addressing a multitude of social, political, and historical issues through his wordless books. I am an absolute fan of his work, and I highly recommend The Arrival, a story about immigration and the struggle to survive in the land of the unknown. Another thought-provoking story is The Lost Thing, which talks about a boy’s journey to finding the origin of this lost “thing” or “creature”. It has also been adapted into a short animated film (with minimal dialogue), and is equally brilliant. (Disclaimer: I shed many tears reading/viewing both of them.) I have shown both to students whom I tutor, and the way they were able to engage with it emotionally was phenomenal. The fact that the novels had no text and only had highly evocative images empowered my students and provided them with the agency to wrestle with the deeper implications, which often led to the creation of their own meanings. Students whose English was not their first language were able to enjoy it just as much as students who were native English speakers because they did not feel threatened by any vocabulary or grammar structures with which they were not familiar. We had a fantastic time going through various images and scenes, holding discussions pertaining to the various emotions they had experienced and how the images manipulated them to feel a certain way.

However, as valuable and useful graphic novels are in building English language skills in various innovative ways, that is not to say that graphic takes precedence over traditional texts, or that traditional texts should be replaced entirely. We should aim to integrate graphic novels in our English classrooms in such a way where the visual and the written can work in tandem, producing the best learning environment possible for students of all skill levels.