comics

Academic Journal Article Comic

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I am delighted to be able to tell you that I have written an academic journal article in comic form. Even better: it is open access until 31 August 2021.

This came about at the Lakes International Comic Art Festival (LICAF) in 2018. LICAF runs over a weekend in mid-October and during the day on the Friday they hold the Academic Sessions, a day for academics who study, make, and use comics in their work. This is always great fun and very thought-provoking too. (I don’t know whether it will happen this year – there is nothing about it on the website at present, so I asked on Twitter, but they didn’t reply.)

Anyway, two colleagues from Perth, Australia, often come over for LICAF. They are Bruce Mutard, comics maker and doctoral student, and Stuart Medley, arts and design professor at Edith Cowan University. We had met before, then at LICAF 2018 we were all producing conference records: me by live-tweeting, and Bruce and Stuart in comic sketch form. In the bar at the end of the day, where good ideas are often hatched, we were reflecting on the process together, and decided there was scope for a journal article.

The process took a while because of all our other commitments, the pandemic, and the publishing process itself. The article was eventually published on 27 May. It is called Is History Fiction? Conundrums In Graphic Representation. I got an email late that day to tell me I had 50 e-prints to give away, so I tweeted the link that evening, and again the following morning. By lunchtime I heard that they had all gone – within 16 hours of my first tweet, which is fairly amazing in itself. I tweeted about that too, and the lovely Becky Guest from Routledge, who has awesome powers, saw the tweet and decided to make the article open access for the next three months.

One thing Bruce, Stuart and I had been a little apprehensive about was the peer review process, because minor revisions to an article in comic form can mean a major amount of work. This has been discussed quite extensively at the academic sessions. With a text article, if a reviewer points out something the authors have missed, and suggests they add a sentence or two, implementing that is straightforward. With a comic, it might mean adding a new character who would have to be drawn from scratch, or one or more new panels which would affect the layout and page count as well as requiring more time-consuming drawing. So amendments to a comic can be much more complex than amendments to text.

As luck would have it, our reviewers were unanimously positive. Let me share my favourite quote:

“I like how the comic betrays readerly expectations: that is to say that the creators lead you to believe you’re embarking upon a conference review, but then the comic shifts focus and starts reflecting upon the justifications of why comics form is great for capturing/reporting on events (like conferences). The comic has a real sense of fun.”

Regular readers will know I frequently argue for a bigger role for fun in scholarship. It’s lovely to be able to put my money where my mouth is. Not that any actual money was involved in this endeavour – so, as always, thanks to my patrons who support me in producing this kind of work.

Please download, read, and share our article widely.

This blog, and the monthly #CRMethodsChat on Twitter, and my YouTube channel, are funded by my beloved patrons.  It takes me more than one working day per month to post here each week, run the Twitterchat and produce content for YouTube. At the time of writing I’m receiving funding from Patrons of $86 per month. If you think a day of my time is worth more that $86 – you can help!  Ongoing  support would be fantastic but you can also make a one-time donation through the PayPal button on this blog if that works better for you. Support from Patrons and donors also enables me to keep this blog ad-free. If you are not able to support me financially, please consider reviewing any of my books you have read – even a single-line review on Amazon or Goodreads is a huge help – or sharing a link to my work on social media. Thank you!

Conversation With A Purpose

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covertest2I have exciting news! This has been a long time in the planning and making, and has come to fruition in part thanks to the support of my beloved patrons. The inspiration came almost two years ago, at one of the pedagogy sessions of the 2016 Research Methods Festival. Research colleagues from the UK’s National Centre for Research Methods, where I am a Visiting Fellow, talked about the difficulty in bridging the gap between classroom and practice when teaching research methods. It occurred to me then that comics and graphic novels could have a useful role to play here, and I vowed to do what I could to make that happen.

Today, I am glad to launch my first research methods comic online. It’s called Conversation With A Purpose and it tells the story of a student’s first real-life interview. I wrote the words, but I couldn’t have made a comic without a collaborator, because I can draw the curtains but that’s about all. My colleague and friend Dr Katy Vigurs put me in touch with Gareth Cowlin who teaches on the Cartoon and Comic Arts degree course at Staffordshire University. I presented his students with a brief, and was lucky enough to recruit the very talented Sophie Jackson to create the artwork for the comic. Sophie is not only a highly skilled artist, she is also a joy to work with, so the entire project was a delight from start to finish.

The in-person launch happened last Friday night at Show and Tell, Staffordshire University’s 2018 art and design degree show. I also launched another creative teaching aid at the show, but you’ll have to wait till next week to find out about that! People’s feedback on the comic was very positive, though I wasn’t surprised because we had already received terrific testimonials from a couple of eminent scholars.

And you know the best part of all? You can download the comic, Conversation With A Purpose, and you will find instructions for printing it here. It will look best if you have a colour printer, though it should also work in monochrome. The comic includes discussion questions for use in the classroom.

Please enjoy, use, and share our comic. And if you would like to help me create more resources like this, please consider joining my patrons. I love producing free stuff to help students and teachers but, as an independent researcher with no guaranteed salary, my resources are very limited. This is where every single supporter makes a real difference.

Cartoons, Comics, and Graphic Novels in Research and Academia #2

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comics with catsMy last post on this topic argued that this is more of a movement than a moment. In fact it was even more than I knew (no doubt still is) as I’ve found out about a number of other resources and activities on the topic since then.

In my last post I mentioned the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, which is published by Taylor & Francis which is part of the multinational Informa plc, and so is paywalled, although there are a couple of open access articles. I have also found another paywalled journal, Studies in Comics, which has an open access issue from its archive. Ernesto Priego kindly reminded me, via Twitter, of The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship which is open access and well worth exploring.

In September, The Annals of the Entomological Society of America published an open access article called Sequential Science: A Guide to Communication Through Comics by Carly Melissa Tribull. This is both interesting and useful, as it contains information and resources on how to make comics and use them in educational settings. I thank Jonathan O’Donnell from RMIT in Melbourne for bringing this to my attention.

Also, as well as the BA in Cartoon and Comic Arts offered by Staffordshire University, the UK also offers a Comics and Graphic Novel Masters degree at the University of Dundee. This is overseen by Professor Chris Murray whose main research area is comics.

The pocket-sized Graphic Guides have been around for a long time. They describe themselves as ‘comic book style’, but this isn’t really accurate in my view; they’re more like short guides illustrated with cartoons. Perhaps for this reason, I’ve never got on with them particularly well, though I know a lot of people love them. However, I’ve discovered an exception in Queer: A Graphic History. I’ve had a copy of this book for some time, and I think it’s terrific, but I only discovered last Friday that it’s part of the Graphic Guides series. This isn’t obvious because it’s in a larger format with a different type of cover. Queer is written by Meg-John Barker (aka MJ), who spoke about their book at an event I went to in London recently (see below for more on this). It is always interesting to hear from other authors about their processes, and about the delights and sadnesses, triumphs and pitfalls they have experienced along the way. I have a great deal of respect for MJ because they are able to make difficult concepts accessible in a way I admire and long to emulate. People at the event were talking about how much their students love Queer and how useful it is for teaching. I can see why; I would have loved it as an undergraduate maybe even more than I love it now.

If you’re into graphic medicine, there’s a tasty-looking conference coming up in Cambridge on 16-17 February 2018. It’s called Comic Epidemic: Cartoons, Caricatures and Graphic Novels, and the call for papers is out now for anyone from the social sciences or the medical humanities; deadline 15 December. Successful applicants will be offered two nights’ accommodation in Cambridge and up to £100 for travel costs.

The seminar series Look Who’s Talking: Eliciting the Voices of Children from Birth to Seven, funded by the University of Strathclyde and held earlier this year, produced visual minutes of the sessions. Some of the people involved with this series have also used cartoon storyboards in research, to investigate the perceptions of students aged 4-15 about learning something new. Both of these projects were led by Professor Kate Wall from the University of Strathclyde, who kindly alerted me to them via Twitter.

Last month I was fortunate to be able to attend the event An Agenda for Graphic Social Science at the Open University in Camden. This is where Meg-John Barker presented their work, along with several other interesting and interested people including a journal editor and a publisher as well as several scholars. This account of the event identifies five areas of activity – blog posts, networking event, curation of resources, academic event, and sharing/recording expertise – and calls for volunteers to help take them forward. If you want to play with the cool kids, get in touch and get involved. We’d love to have you.

I’m sure that’s not all… but it’s all for now. And enough, I think, to argue that these media are moving from the fringes towards the mainstream in research and academia. Even so, if you have anything to add, please do so in the comments.

 

Cartoons, Comics, and Graphic Novels in Research and Academia

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Cartoons, comics, and graphic novels in research and academia are having a moment. Actually it’s a bit more than a moment, but before I go into that, let’s start with some definitions. In terms of the visual arts, as I understand it, a cartoon is generally understood to be a single drawing; a cartoon strip or a comic strip is a series of a few sequential cartoons. Comics and graphic novels are more interchangeable terms for longer works, though people tend to use ‘comics’ to refer to the more lightweight end of the spectrum or reading matter for children. Conversely, ‘graphic novels’ are viewed as more serious and adult. In fact, though, they’re essentially the same thing: a graphic art medium for storytelling.

Academics from a range of disciplines are beginning to realise that this form has a great deal to offer for research communication and teaching. It is taught in some universities, though usually bundled in with other arts techniques such as illustration or animation. Few universities are offering sequential graphic art as a stand-alone or interdisciplinary subject at present, though there are some exceptions at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the UK and the US. For example, in the UK, Staffordshire University’s BA in Cartoon and Comic Arts has been running for some years now. In the US, the University of Oregon offers an interdisciplinary Comics and Cartoon Studies minor, and Minneapolis College of Art and Design offers a Comic Arts major option on their Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Savannah College of Art and Design offers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in sequential art, which are also available in Hong Kong and online. California College of the Arts offers a Master of Fine Arts degree in comics, as does the Center for Cartoon Studies in Vermont. No doubt there are others too, though I haven’t found any outside the US/UK. For example, there are no such courses in Australia at present, though the Sydney Comics Guild suggests keeping an eye on MIT in Melbourne, presumably because they may run one in time to come.

Although the UK has few courses, it does have other initiatives. For example, the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics is based in the UK. This journal focuses on the production and consumption of comics in their cultural, institutional, and creative contexts. An international Research, Outreach and Pedagogy Network (ReOPeN) for graphic novels and comics is based at Lancaster University. A mini-conference on comics and graphic novels in academia was held in Kendal in October, part of the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. I was lucky enough to go to this and meet academics working with comics and graphic novels from as far afield as Perth, Australia, as well as closer to home. Then there’s this free event in London tomorrow (tickets still available!) on graphic social science, which I will also be attending. Next year in London the historians are holding a two-day conference on the pre-modern world in comics. And it’s not only the academics who are using comics: this video demonstrates the use of graphic art, animation, and puppets in health evaluation research.

Comics are also being used for communicating science and medicine. As these links suggest, there is also a wider international focus on graphic art in academia and research. For example, the PathoGraphics conference in Berlin last month looked at the use of comics to communicate about illness and disability, and a recent Twitterchat via the #MethodsMatter hashtag focused on work in this area from various African countries.

I’m sure there are many more examples. I was teaching writing for publication to staff at the University of Derby yesterday and I mentioned graphic novels. One staff member said she didn’t like them as a reader, but she thought she should take steps to overcome her dislike, because she understood they were gaining traction. Another staff member, Dr Katy Vigurs, had been involved in producing a comic about student debt with students in her previous role at Staffordshire University. There’s a lot of this about, and it’s growing. So I think comics and graphic novels in research and academia are not so much having a moment as becoming a movement.