Students-- the ones I know are the only ones I can speak to-- seem to really revel in the reading and discussion of graphic novels. One even dared me, well, she suggested I do a course in the graphic novel..."I would take it," she said. Three more chimed in with, "I would too," and "You really should, Dr. X."
The thing is we're so dang busy (see an earlier blog from this week..) assessing ourselves that there is little, if any, residual energy for creative course proposals. Yet I know I could match up the standards to the American Library Association's and to the accreditation body's standards... It would also be a great addition to my 'outside' the canon aggregate of courses.
I "taught" Satrapi's Persepolis last week in a gender studies class; we discussed Maus I in this evening's class. They, meaning the students, have loads to say about both. I had only given them an excerpt from Spiegleman's Pulitzer text, and we could have gone on for hours (a typical lit prof's hyperbole? Me thinks so.) But a goal of the course is exposure--exposure to non-canonical literature, and its omnifarious genres and perspectives.
See, the dialogue doesn't begin in the classroom, the dialogue as I would call it, begins in the brain. Right-brain & left-brain firing synapses to decode the alphabetic and visual texts. Some 'text' or captions are provided, and direct speech makes its way in the cartoon bubble. And although the author-illustrator dictates what you will read and illustrates what she wants you to see--how she sees it, her p.o.v., if you will, it does not necessarily mean that it's easier to read pictures. For example, Satrapi introduces her uncle in a frame; she shows us her elevated view of this man not with her diction but in the halo-like light behind him. We are not told but shown that he is an honorable man--the image is crucial to meaning, on the connotative vs. denotative level.
The culture of the Academy is slow to change...it is not always as open, or liberal as the "right" fears it is...
The thing is we're so dang busy (see an earlier blog from this week..) assessing ourselves that there is little, if any, residual energy for creative course proposals. Yet I know I could match up the standards to the American Library Association's and to the accreditation body's standards... It would also be a great addition to my 'outside' the canon aggregate of courses.
I "taught" Satrapi's Persepolis last week in a gender studies class; we discussed Maus I in this evening's class. They, meaning the students, have loads to say about both. I had only given them an excerpt from Spiegleman's Pulitzer text, and we could have gone on for hours (a typical lit prof's hyperbole? Me thinks so.) But a goal of the course is exposure--exposure to non-canonical literature, and its omnifarious genres and perspectives.
See, the dialogue doesn't begin in the classroom, the dialogue as I would call it, begins in the brain. Right-brain & left-brain firing synapses to decode the alphabetic and visual texts. Some 'text' or captions are provided, and direct speech makes its way in the cartoon bubble. And although the author-illustrator dictates what you will read and illustrates what she wants you to see--how she sees it, her p.o.v., if you will, it does not necessarily mean that it's easier to read pictures. For example, Satrapi introduces her uncle in a frame; she shows us her elevated view of this man not with her diction but in the halo-like light behind him. We are not told but shown that he is an honorable man--the image is crucial to meaning, on the connotative vs. denotative level.
The culture of the Academy is slow to change...it is not always as open, or liberal as the "right" fears it is...
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