Discourse Chronicle

As DC Comics recently announced, the comic book company behemoth announced a new line of comic books aimed at the broader female audience, with a new imprint called Minx. The first book scheduled to hit in May is the 176 graphic novel “Plain Janes,” from writer Cecil Castellucci and artist Jim Rugg. –Arune Singh

category: Comics, Literacy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

[Here is my list of assigned textbooks for my freshman composition students next semester with rationales:

Writer’s Harbrace Handbook (Third Edition)
Texas A&M University uses the Harbrace Handbook as a standard adoption, but our department is not switching to third edition until next year, due to custom cover requests. Despite that, I received permission to assign this new edition early because I learned about a new chapter on visual rhetoric after a recent meeting with its author, Dr. Cheryl Glenn.

Signs of Life in the USA: Readings on Popular Culture for Writers (Fifth Edition)
An excellent collection of popular culture essays about topics ranging from Barbie dolls to comic books and film. I chose this text as my reader because my students provided feedback wishing for in-class examples that may seem more familiar to them. I may develop lessons from its readings, but more importantly, I am assigning oral presentations about them as a means of encouraging in-class participation on a regular basis. I am also able to speak better on popular culture than some other topics, thus improving my teaching due to increased confidence over material.

Understanding Comics
Scott McCloud’s text discussing comic books in comic book format. I assigned a few chapters from this book already and students responded extremely well and claim McCloud’s presentation helped them learn difficult concepts such as Aristotle’s Model of Argument (Ethos, Logos, Pathos). Many of its chapters relate with our four paper topics and will act as a supplement to our handbook readings.

Writing Traditions
A compositional exercise workbook containing sample student essays and covers concepts such as summary and paraphrase, plagiarism, MLA format, peer review, and others. Non-negotiable.

Typical American
Gish Jen’s novel about Ralph, a Chinese immigrant graduate student working on his PhD in Engineering, and how him and his family become Americanized. Non-negotiable. BK]

category: Comics, Life, Literacy, Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Gene Luen Yang is a teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area who also happens to be a fine illustrator. He produced a graphic novel (or “comic book,” as we used to call them), American Born Chinese, which has been nominated for a National Book Award in the young people’s literature category.

I have not read this particular “novel” but I’m familiar with the genre so I’m going to go out on a limb here. First, I’ll bet for what it is, it’s pretty good. Probably damned good. But it’s a comic book. And comic books should not be nominated for National Book Awards, in any category. That should be reserved for books that are, well, all words.

This is not about denigrating the comic book, or graphic novel, or whatever you want to call it. This is not to say that illustrated stories don’t constitute an art form or that you can’t get tremendous satisfaction from them. This is simply to say that, as literature, the comic book does not deserve equal status with real novels, or short stories. It’s apples and oranges. -Tony Long

[From Ted. BK]

category: Comics, Literacy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

Ironic, because the book is all about image: the vision of the Green Knight when he arrives amid the Yuletide revels; the image of perfection that Gawain’s shield represents, a pentangle on one side and Mary on the other; the picture of the perfect chivalrous knight that Gawain finds burdensome when he’s face to face with an avid reader of romances and doesn’t feel up to the role; and the picture of heroism that Gawain measures himself against — and finds he is lacking. -K. A. Laity

[Kate is referring to the cover of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by W.S. Merwin and how it relates with the story. BK]

category: Literacy, Poetry, Rhetoric and Poetics    

No, Sanders has full-fledged bibliomania. The bookstore owner exhibits all the classic symptoms of the disorder listed by Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia: buying “multiple copies of the same book and [the] accumulation of books beyond possible capacity of use.” -Lynda Percival

[Joel Pace, an undergraduate mentor and friend of mine, experiences bibliomania often and frequently as he collects rare books for his research with Wordsworth and Transatlantic Romanticism. I remember him smelling his books and that seemed odd to me because I cannot smell. BK]

category: Bibliography, Literacy, Popular Culture    

Joystiq’s sister site DS Fanboy recently posted about a homebrew effort called Comic Book DS that lets you transfer comics from your computer and read them book-style with the DS flipped on end. You don’t have to conceal issues of Action Comics underneath an old copy of Newsweek that you swiped off your dentist’s waiting table on your commute any longer. Now people will think you’re doing some serious work on your stylish PDA while you secretly use the touchscreen to pan and zoom on comic panels — pure genius. Comic book fanboys can rid themselves of their secret shame. -Kevin Kelly

[I may disagree with concealing comic books, but when Kelly mentions “Final Fantasy XXXIV: Tax Time,” I find it hilarious. BK]

category: Gaming, Literacy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics, Technology    

Comic book superheroes have successfully fought their way onto the shelves of public libraries in the form of graphic novels. Time-resistant superhero Wonder Woman, along with such newbies as Spy Boy, Black Panther and X-Men, have hit the shelves of Essex High School library and are garnering reader wait lists that have their classic counterparts green with envy. – Emily Guziek

[A colleague in the English department mentioned a current discussion within the American Library Association about how to classify graphic novels and comic books in the Library of Congress system. Another quote I support from this article is: “It’s a misconception to assume the graphic novel is a comic book,” said Steve Dowd, co-chairman of the Essex High School English department. “It’s a particular genre, and we recognize the role graphic novels can play for us. They can’t even keep those books on the library shelves.” BK]

category: Comics, Literacy, Popular Culture    

Books in graphic format can be fiction or nonfiction material. “Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island: the Graphic Novel” adapted by Tim Hamilton, and “Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty: the Graphic Novel” adapted by June Brigman, are examples of fiction classics. While “Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad” by Michael Martin, and “Battle of the Alamo” by Matt Doeden, are nonfiction subjects presented in graphic format. -Libby Rupert

[Will Eisner adapted Moby-Dick, Don Quixote, and The Princess and the Frog. Eisner also presented Fagin the Jew (from Dickens’s Oliver Twist) and Sundiata. BK]

category: Comics, Literacy, Popular Culture    

Not everyone is impressed by graphic novels. Some teachers refuse to assign them to their students, claiming they aren’t challenging to read. But many librarians and teachers stand by the books.

“Reading graphic novels leads to reading other things,” says Robin Brenner, a young-adult librarian with the Brookline Public Library in Massachusetts. “There’s a value in and of themselves, not just as a bridge to reading ‘real books.’ ” -Randy Dotinga

[Believing graphic novels are not sophisticated reading is a serious mistake and teachers who are refusing to use graphic novels on those grounds must be members of an uninformed persuasion. I am convinced people holding such an attitude are hindering scholarly progress each time I read an article making a similar statement.

I am wrapping up a four-week unit on Analyzing Visual Rhetoric with my freshman composition students next week and two things made it especially hard. First, high school curriculums divorce rhetoric from composition and only focus on the latter which leads to value being assigned to the final draft (product). Second, students lack a necessary background in rhetoric to discuss analysis and argument, so instructors must fuse rhetoric and composition again and emphasize the writing process. Theoretically, if we improve the process our students use to produce the product, then the product is improved as a result.

Brenner’s comment fuels the unnecessary negative stigma associated with comics and graphic novels by alluding to these texts as if they are gateway drugs, which may be an apt metaphor, if we substitute books for drugs. Comic books and graphic novels are capable of leading young readers to read increasingly difficult texts if we are willing to make connections between literature and comics or graphic novels, but I am thinking the answer lies in encouraging people to read. I know one reason I became an English major to begin with is because I knew if I did not, then I may never read texts most people encounter, but I also love reading. BK]

category: Comics, Literacy, Pedagogy, Popular Culture, Rhetoric and Poetics    

The first new project to be released under the agreement features New York Times bestselling author Laurell K. Hamilton. Based on Hamilton’s most famous creation, Anita Blake, Marvel and The Dabel Brothers will release a thrilling new comic book series called Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter in Guilty Pleasures in October 2006.

[…]

Additionally, in the coming months Marvel and The Dabel Brothers will be bringing to comic book form George R. R. Martin’s Hedge Knight series, Orson Scott Card’s Red Prophet, and Raymond E. Feist’s Magician: Apprentice (part one of the Riftwar saga). -CBR News Team

category: Comics, Literacy, Popular Culture