Teaching / Producing the Graphic Novel

This year I taught two first-year seminars on the graphic novel, and while the classes and students were terrific, their end-of-term projects were outstanding.  Throughout the course, the students produced a group annotated bibliography on the graphic novel, they wrote essay about the novels we read, and as a final project, the students used ComicLife and produced their own graphic novella.  Throughout the term, their work was good -- as students from this university typically produce good work -- but the work they produced on the novellas was, by and large, outstanding.

This project expected students to produce a novella (8 pages was the minimum requirement) that addressed a complex issue that could, as Sir Philip Sidney stated, to "teach and delight," as the novels we read throughout the semester addressed complex issues but were engaging to read.  (We read novels about the Holocaust in Maus, drugs and street life in Sentences, politics in V for Vendetta, and teenage angst and acceptance in Black Hole).  And the graphic novella had to be stylized in a way that a coincided with the theme of the story.  (The four graphic novels we read all had very different styles and illustrations.) 

The novellas ranged in themes.  From "The Life of a Loofah" ("My roommate uses it to was the dishes!") to themes of procrastination (probably the funniest of the novellas), from mission trips to aid those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, to themes of death and suicide.  Some students took their own photographs for use in the novellas (they were required to take some of the photographs themselves), they used copyright free images from Flickr, and some even drew their own images.  One student retold the story of Bonnie and Clyde based on a poem she found through another of her courses this semester.

The use of ComicLife and the creation of the novella mirrored the process of written composition in many ways, and the students wrote about that mirroring in the essay that accompanied the graphic novel.  They also wrote about what producing the graphic novella taught them about writing.

Overall, this was an outstanding seminar-- the students were wonderful and were so engaged with the work-- but with the graphic novella I'm convinced yet again, when students can "play" with the text in such a way that they can state whatever it is they want to state, and if they can do it in another mode (not the research paper, for example), they can do really good work.  Now to be clear, this course had research-academic-writing components, but it's not all it included.  The inclusion of the ComicLife/graphic novella creation assignment allowed the students to take all they had learned throughout the course and apply it to something that was fun to them.

You can click on the "Pages" link in the right gutter for a sample of the student-produced work.  Click on Student Projects (10833) for a sample.  The sample produced here is used by permission.  Many of the student samples were as good as this one -- this is representative of the course work overall.  However, this students did some additional work in Photoshop and produced some aesthetically gorgeous photographs.  Enjoy!

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As an added note:  Students used the free 30-day trial download of ComicLife to produce their work.  My next goal is to get the New Media Lab on our campus to purchase a license for this software for the entire lab.

Comments

[JM]

Our lab has Comic Life on all the machines, so if you need a precedent to help convince anyone....www.aml.wsu.edu :)

and that sample project? very very cool.

[joanna]

I just tried Comic Life and am interested in pursuing writing and reading graphic novels in the coming semesters. Which novels would you suggest for FYC?

[billie]

Joanna-- Yea!!!! This was about the best course(s) I've ever taught. The students **loved** it. There are so many graphic novels to choose from.... we read Art Spiegelman's *Maus* (parts I and II) about the author's father's experiences during the Holocaust; Percy Carey's *Sentences* (hip-hop, rap, drugs, street life); Moore and Lloyd's *V for Vendetta* (politics); and Charles Burns' *Black Hole* (teen angst, mutants, sex). :-)

Which novels you choose to read might depend on your students (their demographic) and what kinds of writing you want them to do throughout the term.

I can send you my assignments if you like.

[joanna]

I would LOVE that!

[Scrivener]

You didn't teach Allison Bechdel, did you? I had some good experiences teaching Fun Home, but not within the context of an entire course about the graphic novel.

I was jealous the second you said you were going to teach these classes and I still am. I'm so glad it was a good experience.