VIRTUAL: Applying Education

Abstract

This presentation is a critical analysis of the practice and comics-based research (CBR), articles, book chapters, and graphic novels I have created over ten years. Three significant themes braid into the golden thread of Community Art Education (CAE): • Narrative drawing and identity; • Making comics in the classroom; and • Material production of comics. These three themes form the framework for my CBR and CAE activities as an artist, researcher, and teacher. Autobiographical and auto-ethnographic comics provide lenses through which the works are analyzed. Most of the academic creations in this thesis are sequentially and narratively drawn as comics and document stories of identity and difference. Reading, making, and studying comics are increasingly accepted in educational settings, thus themes of narrative drawing and identity flow into the phenomenon of making comics. As a comics-based educational artist, researcher, and teacher I observe and document the ways making comics in the classroom impact student experience. Making comics as a component of CAE raises questions regarding the ways the medium supports negotiations of identity, relationality with cartooning in the classroom, and the material handling and processes of making comics. In what ways does the medium of comics support the formation of author identity? What are the ways comics can be made in the classroom? What are the benefits and drawbacks of traditional versus digital modes of production in comics? I suggest the comics medium is a counterrevolutionary pedagogical tool that supports author negotiations of identity and difference through making.