Graphic Novels & Comics

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Comment by Raven on April 13, 2009 at 8:11pm

Several of the teachers at my school have also used Persepolis in teaching about the diversity of Middle East experiences, and relating youth experiences transitioning from childhood to adolescence to adulthood. Students enjoyed the text, after being scaffolded into Persepolis by getting background on Iran, checking the styles of the illustrations, and developing a sense of respect and critical awareness of other cultural standards and struggles.

I wanted to share two graphic novels that I am deeply interested in, two that I have taught for activism and cultural awareness and one that I want to use next year. I have used Palestine by Joe Sacco to teach about relations between Palestinians and Israelis in the Gaza strip, and to compare occupation and violence that Palestinians experience to inner city areas that are plagued by disenfranchisement and gun violence. I originally used Palestine several years ago (pre-9/11) to give students a historical perspective on a conflict that they hear about in the news, but really don't know much about. In teaching the text at first I took for granted my own interests and growing up with comics and graphic novels. I didn't realize that many students had not looked at comics beyond a single horizontal strip, and didn't even know hat direction to read, or how images related to dialogue and textual references. In the first exposition fot he book we had to rewind and read pages together, and I asked students to create a sequence of events for a single page, in order to become familiar with an entirely new genre. For those that have read Palestine, there are also pages dense with historical information, which I found requires a mapping of sorts (one page a t a time). We experimented with students forming a circle and each having an event, switching up the order of the events, and then putting things back in order. All of this demonstrated the need for a heavy investment in reading Palestine, and I found that it takes about 1.5 weeks per chapter of the text, to really engage it well, meaning that we could only read about four chapters each year. My primarily African-American students identified with issues in the text relating the Israeli occupation to the isolation of African American communities in the US. Many gang-bangers in my classes felt that these dangers must be a universal experience fro oppressed communities worldwide. Although I tried to present the text without my own subjective ideology, students guided many discussions in new directions that I actually felt in accord with.

With the release of "The Gaza Strip" I was able to augment the text which focuses on broad communal experiences, with the experiences of a youth living in the Gaza strip for ten months (?). I would use both texts separately, because the content of each elicits a different response from students. I did not use the film until the third year, and youth in my classes really felt affinity with the youth facing overt violence from the Israeli military. I asked for academics from the U of C to present to the class and discuss both sides of the issue, and I remember that one of my students said, "It's like a family feud, cousins fighting cousins!" This year I have worked with a fellow humanities instructor on diversifying the unit and lengthening study of Gaza Strip issues to ten weeks. Inevitably this incurred ongoing discussion on the US occupation of Iraq, and again bringing a variety of outside educators in to present to students.
Okay...let's get to another text!

I just did a unit on Malcolm X, using the graphic novel by as a primary source for students. We read the graphic novel and students used it to identify personal, communal, and societal experiences that motivated X's work as an activist. The novel is also full of historical references which necessitated going to the library and the computer lab to get background on the Nation of Islam, on other civil rights organizations and religiously based Black liberation groups, and finding out if there was misinformation in the graphic novel. We followed up the reading with two weeks of watching Spike Lee's film Malcolm X. Students evaluated what visual and historical messages were communicated differently in both texts. Students noticed that the graphic novel could spend two panles with paragraphs of hostorical background, where a movie could not do so and still engage the audience. We also assessed whether both works fit into accommodative, transformative, hegemonic, or critical categories (Aronowitz and Giroux). Interestingly the students noted that the film still had to cater to a wider American audience, and even though it is Spike Lee, seemed to more carefully traverse some ideological perspectives. On the other hand they noted that the graphic novel has a freer hand in depicting a greater amount of images, and how evident that both texts attempt to transform and add to the historical narrative found in movies and comic books. I experimented with freezing some film frames and comparing them with panels in the graphic novel. The students immediately pointed out that the color and lighting from the film, and the more three dimensional viewpoints available through focus and chosen settings. I didn't know many of the things we have learned in the presentations for this class and I want to use some of the language from film-making to more specifically orient our analysis of graphic novels and films.

Two of my students came up with an awesome idea at the end of the Malcolm X unit...they want to tell resistance narratives through their own graphic novels. They had heard about the unit I teach on ex-slave communities and thought why not draw novels about the history left out of their history books. This is a completely different focus, in that we can study some novels that push for transformative outlooks against hegemony and meta-narrative, and then use other historical documents to re-create history for other students in the future. Am I saying this right? They want their `new' graphic novels to be the ones students use in future classes to learn about unmentionables in traditional history courses.

Lastly I want to share a few new graphic novels that I have found: "Nat Turner" by Kyle Baker, "After 9/11" by Sid Jacobson and Ernie Colon, "The Real Cost of Prisons" by Lois Ahrens, and "A People's History of American Empire." Our schools mission statement stresses arts-integration and critical multiculturalism, which you may notice in my interest in social justice based graphic novels. I want to develop a unit next year where students redesign prisons, as they have down in their "Dream Schools" unit. Additionally I want to figure out how to incorporate "Nat Turner" as part of the ex-slaves unit.

Malcom1LP.doc

Comment by Jasmine Tyler on April 7, 2009 at 10:49am

Having taught Persepolis a number of times now, the scene that seems to cause the most "interest" is the urination/torture scene on page 51. I teach the novel from the aspect of understanding culture, and because of the age of my students (sophomores and seniors) I appeal to their maturity and we discuss the horror of this torture not only in the pain department but also in their cultural and religious beliefs. The Islamic faith prizes and regards modesty as a big aspect of culture, so although the offense of being urinated on is huge, it is an additional insult in the lack of modesty being exercised.

On the younger years approach to Satrapi's elementary days, I don't know if I would agree that she was as informed as she appears about EVERY aspect -i.e. the exact nature of the torture that occurred. She wrote this as an adult, using her "childhood" perspective and although it is truthful, it is likely that she included information that she learned later but did not know at the time. It doesn't make the information less true. She says in the introduction that she wrote the novel so that "those Iranians who lost their lives in prisons defending freedom who died in the war against Iraq, who suffered under various repressive regimes, or who were forced to leave their families and flee their homeland to be forgotten." (Satrapi) In that respect, she needs to include the historical events that she may not have fully understood at the age she experienced it, but that she was aware of it. She never saw the soldiers dying in battle, nor was she present at the Rex Theater, but she uses this history to help demonstrate WHAT was occurring and why the people and society responded to these things.

Comment by Nick Sousanis on April 7, 2009 at 10:23am

Hey Peter,
thanks for the response. The audience is not little kids, but my goal is just about everybody else. Though that said, i tend towards heady stuff in my comics (www.spinweaveandcut.blogspot.com). I don't have any great intent to portray the activities as particularly steamy - in fact the panels in question may end up being image-less sidebars. So that's less of an issue (and they are butterflies after all.) Anyhow, it's simply that the terms themselves i can imagine will raise some eyebrows - even entirely from a scientific perspective, however i want to keep the info in because the strategies that creatures use to ensure their genes being passed on are amazing, and that's the context i'm presenting it in. I'll get a little farther into developing that aspect, and ask more to you Peter. Thanks for the help.
best, nick

Comment by Peter Gutierrez on April 7, 2009 at 10:11am

Nick, who is the book's primary audience to begin with? Is it intended largely for school libraries, for instance?
Sex from a biological perspective, as in illustrated books on animals and nature videos, is generally acceptable, but one still must bear the age range of readers in mind. And of course it depends on your presentation itself -- the extent to which things are overly "steamy."
Well, I guess some of the things I'm saying are obvious, but if you want to continue this conversation outside of the group and this thread, pls don't hesitate to contact me: part of my day-to-day business is helping publishers and creators tailor or re-purpose work for specific target audiences.

Comment by Nick Sousanis on April 7, 2009 at 10:01am

Joining this discussion late, with a question from the making comics side of things. I'm working on a comic now on monarch butterflies - and want to include a little bit about butterfly sex - which is surprisingly steamy. But as with the scenes in question from Watchmen and Persepolis - does this sort of thing bounce the book from cerain audiences. Having asked that, i'll now go read the John Weaver piece that i think started this thread. Also, Ryan, happy to upload my list of GN resources sometime soon... Nick

Comment by James Bucky Carter on April 2, 2009 at 8:49pm

Is that scene straight-up criticized or just mentioned as an example of a scene that might need some care? It's certainly a scene that I've mentioned as one that might make some teachers of younger children nervous. In previous work, I've mentioned teaching works in excerpt or even using certain panels or pages and writing rationales/contracts for works that might be considered controversial to some. To some degree this gets at the tension between access and teacher-censorship, I know, but there's no reason we need to teach any text in full, really...

I'll tell the list what I tell my students about the penis/urination torture scene and using Persepolis with younger audiences: I'd be very interested ot know how Satrapi herself would answer the question of this text's use with elementary children, especially since she was elementary school-age as she was experiencing/hearing about some of those things.

Have you all read Stephen Cary's thoughts on "Naked Buns Effect?" Worth checking out as an explaining metaphor for the "graphic" in graphic novels.

Comment by Ryan Goble on April 2, 2009 at 8:21pm

Humm, in response to your question Kate, I wonder how John Weaver deals with the sex scene in Watchmen... since they are images it seems to me that if you're in a school district that is sensitive you would have to treat comics the same way you would treat film by sending home permission slips. That being said, there are lots of horrific images in Maus and I've never heard about anyone sending slips home for that. John what do you do?

Kate - do you think (and I'm just thinking out loud here) maybe this is a discussion forum type thread? If you post specific topics/questions in there (where John's is) it is easier to reference them later as it seems like this comment wall could get endless... What do you think?

Comment by katie monnin on April 2, 2009 at 8:15pm

i wonder how everyone addresses the issue of "explicit" images in some graphic novels. for instance, i find satrapi's persepolis VERY appropriate for high school readers. but there is the jail scene with the uncle that is sometimes criticized and given as a reason for not teaching this graphic novel (especially b/c the "inappropriate" image can be "seen" and is "drawn out"). i wonder how you guys respond to this when asked about it????

Comment by Jen Powers on April 2, 2009 at 6:10pm

Okay, Ryan, here I am! Looks like a fab group.

Comment by James Bucky Carter on April 2, 2009 at 1:05pm

Just saying hi, all! :)

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