by Lars Wallner
Comics as Narrative Tools[i]
Comics are a narrative form combining text and image in surveyable sequences (McCloud 9). In Sweden, comics are common reading for children, young readers and adults, even though comics reading among young people seems to have lessened, as have all types of reading—see, for example, Statens Offentliga Utredningar (231). Despite what these reading trends seem to indicate, publication of comics for children has grown in the past few years (The Swedish Institute for Children’s Books 25). Throughout my dissertation study (Wallner, Framing Education), I came in contact with many teachers from different levels of schooling who were interested in using comics in their classrooms. These contacts indicated not only an interest on the part of teachers, but also an interest on the part of students wanting to read, and to benefit from reading, comics in school.
Comics are also a prime material for studying how students engage in conversations on reading and writing—that is to say, literacy—especially because of how comics combine text and images. Because of this, a study of the use of comics in a school context can contribute greatly both to our knowledge of literacy construction with comics and to a better picture of what literacy entails.
In order to study this ongoing practice in the classroom, I made video recordings of three classes in Grade 3 (age 8-10) and one class in Grade 8 (age 13-15). In total, 77 students and 6 teachers, in two different Swedish cities, contributed to this study. 15 lessons were recorded with work in whole class, pairs and groups. As a researcher, I had no influence over the settings or materials: the teachers had already chosen the amount of time to be spent on comics, the material that they wanted to work with for each lesson and how they wanted to use said material. My role in the classroom was merely to film the activities that they planned and carried out.
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Tags: classroom, classroom practice, comics literacy, discursive psychology, education, Heidi K. Hammond, literacy, Matthew Pustz, social interaction, Sweden
Introduction
As a fan of manga outside of Japan, there comes a time when one is no longer able to stand waiting for translated editions. Perhaps you search online for scanlations, or head out to your local Japanese bookstore to buy them in the original. Needless to say, taking the latter choice draws its own new problems, primarily being how to read the text, whether by taking Japanese language classes or studying on one’s own. In both cases, it can be the beginning of a long, sometimes frustrating but always exciting journey in acquiring a new language. In full honesty, this is not a general story, but rather my story—and perhaps many readers’ too. While I did not start reading manga anticipating learning Japanese at the time, let alone having it as a specific goal, it would not be an underestimation to say that the linguistic elements of manga quickly became one of the most important aspects for me as a reader.
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Tags: akahon, Anime-manga.jp, anti-comics feeling, classroom, education, educational comics, image-text, intertextuality, Japan, Japan Foundation Japanese-Language Institute, Japanese Agency for Cultural Affairs, Japanese manga, Japanese National Institute of Informatics, Kitazawa Rakuten, Kondō Hidezō, language acquisition, manga, manga studies, modern manga, onomatopoeia, post-war period, scanlations, Scott McCloud, Shimizu Kon, shōjo, shōnen, stereotypes, yakuwari-go, Yokoyama Ryōichi
I. Who is Ishiko Junzō?[1]
Arguably, one of the first Japanese critics to discuss graphic narratives (story manga) for mature audiences is Ishiko Junzō (1928 – 1977).[2] Initially active as an art critic who explored a wide range of contemporaneous artistic and popular movements, he began to publish writings more specifically on manga between the mid-1960s and mid-1970s. To many English-language readers his name might be obscure, perhaps even more so than his contemporary, philosopher and cultural critic Tsurumi Shunsuke, whose book Sengo Nihon no taishū bunkashi (A Cultural History of Postwar Japan 1945-1980)—a chapter of which is devoted to postwar manga—is available in English. Yet, in present-day Japanese-language manga research, Ishiko is repeatedly referenced, especially in relation to his media-specific discussion of manga. This article shall introduce art critic Ishiko Junzō and his scholarship, concentrating on his contribution to Japanese comics criticism and manga studies.
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Tags: adult readership, aesthetics, alternative comics, alternative manga, art, Artists, “anti-art” movements, censorship, Charles Hatfield, children readers, comics industry, Dick Higgins, digital media, Doryun Chong, dōjinshi, education, fandom, film, formalism, Garo, gekiga, Gondō Suzumu, graphic narratives, historiography, hyōgen-ron, intermediality, Ishiko Junzō, Japan, Japanese manga, jaqueline berndt, Kajii Jun, Kajiya Kenji, kashihon-ya, Kikuchi Asajirō, Magnificent 49ers, manga, manga criticism, Manga geijutsu-ron, manga studies, Manga to eiga, Mangashugi, mature readers, Miryam Sas, Miwa Kentarō, Mizuki Shigeru, MOMA, Negative Perceptions of Comics, Osamu Tezuka, psychology, Scott McCloud, seinen, Shirato Sanpei, shōjo, social class, structuralism, taishū bunka, Takano Shinzō, Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Tezuka, Tezuka Osamu, Tsuge Yoshiharu, Tsurumi Shunsuke, Uryū Yoshimitsu, USA, Walter Benjamin, Weekly Shōnen Magazine, Yamane Sadao
As regular readers of Comics Forum are aware, the site recently featured a Themed Month which sought to examine comics as cultural production. The issue looked first at the work of comic book authors (Woo 2013) and ended with an autobiographical account of one scholar’s experiment as a comic book retailer (Miller 2013). In the following article I hope to continue to chart the life of a comic book by examining one particular comic after sales as it is read not by academics, but by a much larger demographic of comic book consumers: teenagers, specifically, Indonesian teenagers.
There has been a debate concerning the role of comics in language acquisition and literacy which can be traced back to the 1950s when Frederic Wertham, among others, argued that comics cause retardation of reading ability (Wertham, 1954). Many modern scholars argue that comics serve as a gateway to literacy (see, for example, the Canadian Council for Learning website, 2013).[1] This article will document my experience and observations as a teacher who uses Art Spiegelman’s Maus in the Indonesian classroom with advanced English-learners. I will describe how I prepared the students to read Maus, the concepts and history which I taught alongside the text, and what the students themselves brought to, and drew from the work.
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Tags: animal characters, anti-Communist purges, anti-Semitism, Art Spiegelman, Chinese Indonesians, classroom, education, Frederic Wertham, History, Holocaust, Indonesia, Japan, Jewish culture, manga, Maus, n, Poland, racial violence, Schindler’s List, Shoah, Translations, WWII
As an educator, I’m always looking for new ways to engage students. As someone who teaches philosophy at a large state school—in fact, at a prototypical American Research University—I’m always trying to convince college students that my subject matter is truly relevant, to their lives and to their budding careers. At the very least, I try to make philosophy fun. And one of the tools that I have developed to help achieve these goals is to use visual arts, especially non-traditional arts like comics, in the classroom.
So, the rest of this post is going to be about what I’ve observed from using comics in the classroom. I’m going to focus on two main things: one positive, and one less so. I think that both of these observations are worth taking seriously.
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Tags: classroom, education, philosophy
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