{"title":"Caticorns and Derp Warz: Exploring children’s literacy worlds through the production of comics","authors":"Helen Jones","doi":"10.1386/STIC_00015_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/STIC_00015_1","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines how an after-school comics club made a space for children’s literacy practices. 21 8- to 10-year-olds took part in the ten-week project. During that time the children made their own comic strips, and worked in groups to create their own self-initiated publications. These comics were sold at two comics fairs, which were collaboratively planned and organized. In this article the multimodal medium of comics will be explored. The concept of children’s literacy worlds will be discussed in relation to identity. Text World Theory will be examined as a framework for analysing children’s literacy worlds, with a particular focus on the bidirectional relationship between the discourse world and the text world. Action Research as a methodology is considered. Text World Theory is then used to interrogate the literacy worlds of two groups of children, examining the interplay of the discourse world and the text world of the two comics created. The article argues that the space for children to create their own, self-initiated narratives plays an important role in children’s meaning making and exploration of identity, through a bidirectional relationship between their discourse and text worlds. Finally, the article offers suggestions for future practice.","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42964155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Damon Herd, D. Jindal‐Snape, C. Murray, Megan Sinclair
{"title":"Comics Jam: Creating healthcare and science communication comics – A sprint co-design methodology","authors":"Damon Herd, D. Jindal‐Snape, C. Murray, Megan Sinclair","doi":"10.1386/stic_00020_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00020_1","url":null,"abstract":"Educational and public information messages can be enlivened through the medium of comics, engaging readers not simply through the content, but through careful application of the attributes of the form. The creative and oftentimes collaborative processes used to create such comics benefit from the blending of different perspectives and expertise in order to ensure that the educational message is precisely calibrated. This article elucidates this argument in light of a suite of educational and public information comics produced by the authors as part of a multidisciplinary team from the Scottish Centre for Comics Studies (SCCS) at the University of Dundee, working with various external partners, and reflects on the methodological and pedagogical approaches embedded in this project. We argue that by using a participatory and iterative process that draws on some of the key elements of Jake Knapp’s concept of the design sprint, a prototype comic can be quickly developed that is informed by relevant scholarship and engages a diverse range of partners as co-designers, which can then be moved quickly to the final version. This process creates a feedback loop between research, practice and the various stakeholders, each of whom is empowered within the co-design methodology to contribute to the comic based on their expertise. This is driven by the operational logic of such projects, which bring together participants from diverse backgrounds and areas of expertise, to collaborate and co-design outputs at the interface between critical and creative investigation. In many cases, the comics that we have produced have been to a tight deadline, where the need for the comic is pressing, so the process partly emerged due to necessity, but became refined over the course of several years, evolving into a practice research approach combined with a sprint co-design methodology that embeds learning outcomes in the process as well as the output. Given the nature of this process, we took to describing this activity as a ‘Comics Jam’, and due to the city’s association with the three J’s of ‘jute’, ‘jam’ and ‘journalism’, the name sort of... stuck.","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":"11 1","pages":"167-192"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49144966","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Using comics and graphic novels in K-9 education: An integrative research review","authors":"Lars Wallner, K. Barajas","doi":"10.1386/STIC_00014_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/STIC_00014_1","url":null,"abstract":"The aim of this article is to increase knowledge on the use of comics as materials in K-9 education (ages 6-15). This is examined through an integrative, systematic literature review of research. S ...","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":"11 1","pages":"37-54"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1386/STIC_00014_1","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49280123","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Call to Adventure","authors":"Zak Waipara","doi":"10.1386/stic_00022_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00022_7","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":"11 1","pages":"205-214"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46530403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"With Great Power Comes Great Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning, and Comics, Susan E. Kirtley, Antero Garcia and Peter E. Carlson (eds) (2020)","authors":"Jason D. DeHart","doi":"10.1386/stic_00024_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00024_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: With Great Power Comes Great Pedagogy: Teaching, Learning, and Comics, Susan E. Kirtley, Antero Garcia and Peter E. Carlson (eds) (2020)\u0000Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 270 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-1-49682-605-3, p/bk, $30","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":"11 1","pages":"223-227"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43105769","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"An interview with Alan Grant","authors":"J. Klaehn","doi":"10.1386/stic_00021_7","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00021_7","url":null,"abstract":"Alan Grant (b. 1949) is a Scottish writer widely known for his work on 2000AD (Anderson: Psi-Division, Judge Dredd, Shamballa, Mazeworld) and for his famous tenures on various titles featuring characters such as Batman and Lobo. He is the co-creator of Anarky, the Ventriloquist,\u0000 Jeremiah Arkham and Mr Zsasz. This interview, undertaken throughout July and August of 2018, explores a range of topics and issues, including (but not limited to) his thoughts comics as a subversive medium; his collaborations with artists Arthur Ranson and Norm Breyfogle; his Anarky character;\u0000 comics and politics; Cassandra Anderson as well as the Judge Dredd comics and film adaptations; his ‘Greeting from Scotland’ story for Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD; his award-winning graphic novel, The Loxleys and the War of 1812; as well as his current writing projects.","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48542969","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Learning to be a lord, a friend, ‘a human’: Lord Snooty as a comic strip representation of John Macmurray’s philosophies of social and emotional learning","authors":"Dona Pursall","doi":"10.1386/stic_00019_1","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00019_1","url":null,"abstract":"Friendship was a central motif of ‘Lord Snooty and His Pals’, a comic strip created by Dudley Dexter Watkins for the launch of DC Thomson’s new children’s weekly,Beano, in July 1938. The Lord and his working-class friends were motivated by their relationship to overcome boundaries in order to play and learn together. This close analysis of strips from the first year of the comic explores the ways in which friendship is depicted, illuminating the extent to which social learning is pivotal to the child reader’s pleasure. This examination is framed within educational thinking from the time. It specifically draws from Scottish philosopher John Macmurray’s notion of ‘valuational knowledge’, which contends that interrelational social compassion, developed through friendships, promotes our capacity for wisdom and rationalization. As one of the many humanist progressives of education at the time, he argued that it is through our companionships that we learn what we need to know in order to live socially. Through appreciation of the ways in which learning and compassion are portrayed in these comics, this article wishes to align these strips with both educational concerns from the 1930s, such as Macmurray’s, and further to draw attention to the relevance of this discussion in the light of renewed interest raised, for example, by Richard Gerver’sEducation: A Manifesto for Change(2019) and as enacted by policies such as Scotland’sCurriculum for Excellence(2010). Through a study of comics for children, this article compares pedagogic ideas from the 1930s with contemporary discourse related to childhood, learning and compassion.","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":"11 1","pages":"147-166"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49356466","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Lessons Drawn: Essays on the Pedagogy of Comics and Graphic Novels, David Seelow (2019)","authors":"Megan Sinclair","doi":"10.1386/stic_00025_5","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00025_5","url":null,"abstract":"Review of: Lessons Drawn: Essays on the Pedagogy of Comics and Graphic Novels, David Seelow (2019)\u0000Jefferson, MO: MacFarland, 186 pp.,\u0000ISBN 978-1-47667-158-1, p/bk, £43.50","PeriodicalId":41167,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Comics","volume":"11 1","pages":"228-231"},"PeriodicalIF":0.3,"publicationDate":"2020-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44491497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}