Sean Connors writes in response to two commonly held assumptions about the use of graphic novels in secondary literature classrooms. The first assumption is that the use of graphic novels is simply a "means to an end," usually as a bridge for reluctant or struggling readers to eventually come to "better" literature. Connors feels that graphic novels are seldom seen as works of literary merit on their own terms. The second assumption Connors writes against is the idea that all students will enjoy reading graphic novels.
Connors devotes some space to a historical overview of comics, and debates over their use in English classrooms, from the 1940s on. Connors uses articles from English Journal in the 1940s to show how comics, even at that time, were seen as a way to bring struggling readers to more valid, literary texts. Connors's overall argument is that many graphic novels are worthy of literary merit; although I agree with him, his evidence is rather slim. He quotes three high school students who praise the genre. Connors also says that "educators routinely cite [graphic novels'] ability to foster self-reflection, initiate social change, promote tolerance, and stimulate the imagination" (67) as rationales, but does not give any direct quotes or examples of this.
Connors's second point, which I had not previously considered, is that many students are aware of the stigma attached to graphic novels, manga, or comics. Connors encountered quite a bit of resistance to the idea of teaching graphic novels among his university-level pre-service teachers; they thought that graphic novels were childish (because they had pictures), did not promote reading because there was little text, and did not promote "critical thinking" (each of the three students mentioned this as a drawback, but it is unclear exactly what they meant by critical thinking). Even more interesting though, were the attitudes Connors encountered from high school students who loved to read graphic novels. He found that those students were reluctant to read graphic novels openly because they felt an attached social stigma.
Connors ends with a call for professional journals like the ALAN Review to generally promote the use of graphic novels, discuss their unique pedagogical challenges, review new graphic novels, and cull the graphic novels of most literary merit for the ALAN readership.
This article raises the question for me, "What exactly is literary merit?" Connors points out that [some] graphic novels should be seen as works of literary merit in their own right, not just as a bridge to something better (Actually, Bucky Carter, who I mentioned in my previous post, has a book called Building Literacy Connections with Graphic Novels: Page by Page, Panel by Panel, that uses graphic novels in conjunction with "classic literature" rather than on their own). So what should the qualifications be? Connors says that not all graphic novels have literary merit, so what makes a text "worth" reading and talking/writing about with 120 students? My own answer would be a combination of thematic depth with thoughtful formal characteristics. Graphic novels are not my genre of expertise, but I can speak to this a little bit. Art Spiegelman's Maus, for example, which I did read with my students, is quite complex, which I think makes it worth unpacking as a group. The story of the author's father, a Holocaust survivor, Maus on one level is a story about what happened during the Holocaust. On another level, it is about the ways in which a traumatic experience can affect a family for generations. Maus is about a father-son relationship. Maus is about memory and repression and moving on, or not. Maus is about a sometimes unreliable and sometimes unsympathetic narrator. Maus also has layers of complex visual symbolism that make it, I think, "worthy" of that kind of a formalist literary analysis. Of course, there is the symbolism of the animals - the Jews are drawn as mice and the Nazis as cats. This symbolic relationship is easy for middle school students to understand. There is also a recurring image of a fly throughout the book, evoking everything from an annoyance, a pest, to flies buzzing over dead bodies (I always thought of Emily Dickinson's poem, "I heard a fly buzz when I died"). In addition, you can also draw students' attention to the size or shape of panels at various points, connecting what is being said to how it is drawn.
Connors, S. P. (2010). "'The Best of Both Worlds': Rethinking the Literary Merit of Graphic Novels. ALAN Review; Vol. 37, Issue 3; ProQuest Education Journals. pg. 65-70.
2 comments:
What is literary merit? Great question. I remember the reflexive answer to the question, what is pornography? (I don't know but I know it when I see it). The A.P. English lit exam free response says "Choose a book from the list above or another of recognized literary merit." So recognition is key to this, somehow. How does one receive the requisite recognition? Are we to assume that the old genre rules apply (meaning, are we to be snobbish about genre fiction? Does that mean no Robert Ludlum, Clive Cussler, Danielle Steele?) The graphic novel conversation is important, and it's a hot topic, and a fast-growing genre, with more than a few masterpieces (Maus 1 and 2, for starters). I suppose there's one thing I consider with these works: are they all pictures, mostly pictures, heavily textual? This seems important, or is visual literacy and a visual rhetoric sufficient to fill the void left by the absence of text? Hmmm.
Ah yeah, good question Jason (how does the balance between text and images influence our perception of a work's literary merit?) I think it would be hard to justify something with no text at all to an outsider (i.e. administrator or parent). Then again, I think that decoding an image (political cartoon or graphic novel panel[s]) takes the same interpretive skills as decoding a text - what is the author/artist saying and how? so maybe there are transferable skills there.
Post a Comment