{"id":1476,"date":"2018-06-11T10:47:44","date_gmt":"2018-06-11T14:47:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2018-06-11T10:47:44","modified_gmt":"2018-06-11T14:47:44","slug":"monday-missive-june-11-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/blog\/2018\/06\/11\/monday-missive-june-11-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"Monday Missive – June 11, 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Sequential Art and Storytelling<\/b>\u00a0— This coming weekend, fans of comic books, graphic novels, and manga will gather in Charlotte for the annual Heroes Convention, also known as HeroesCon.\u00a0 One of the largest such conventions in the country, HeroesCon will take place at the Charlotte Convention Center from\u00a0June 15<\/span><\/span>–17<\/span><\/span>.\u00a0 The fact that this event is big enough to fill Charlotte’s largest venue for conventions is a clear indicator of the importance of these forms of popular culture.<\/p>\n

Comic books, graphic novels, and manga all use sequential art to tell stories.\u00a0 Most examples also include text, but the text is generally subordinate to the visual images.\u00a0 The use of sequential art as a way to convey narratives can be traced all the way back to cave paintings.\u00a0 Over the years, this approach to storytelling has developed its own conventions and rhetorical devices.\u00a0 Understanding the nuances of comics and similar forms of culture requires consumers\/readers to have a grounding in a specialized type of visual literacy.\u00a0 Well, this sounds like a job for super professors. In fact, several professors in our English Department cover sequential art\u00a0in their classes and\/or their scholarship.<\/p>\n

Paula\u00a0Connolly\u00a0covers the inner workings of comics and graphic novels in a\u00a0graduate course she teaches on the\u00a0visual\u00a0semiotics of children’s literature.\u00a0 She also regularly includes graphic novels in her various children’s and adolescent literature classes.\u00a0 In an\u00a0email message she sent to me she wrote, “This year the graphic texts in my classes range from fantasy to realistic discussions of civil rights, including Raymond Briggs’s\u00a0The Snowman<\/i>\u00a0(one of the earliest wordless graphic texts in children\u2019s lit), John Lewis (et al)’s\u00a0March<\/i>\u00a0series, Gene Yang’s\u00a0American Born Chinese<\/i>, Shaun Tan’s\u00a0The Arrival<\/i>, and Brian Bendis’s\u00a0Ultimate Comics:Spider-Man<\/i>\u00a0Vol 1 (aka ‘Black Spiderman’ issue). What’s particularly fascinating is the development of hybrid novels, like Kate DiCamillo’s\u00a0Flora and Ulysses: The Illuminated Adventures<\/i>, in which graphic and traditional forms intersect as a way to create new narrative possibilities–in DiCamillo’s book, for new character points of view.”<\/p>\n

Alan Rauch’s interest in comics and graphic novels stems from his\u00a0childhood.\u00a0 In an email message to me, he wrote, “I read comic books from an early age (much to my father’s chagrin).\u00a0 I did do a lot of illustration and contemplated a career as either an artist or illustrator.\u00a0 In college, I did illustrations and cartoons for the school newspaper,\u00a0The McGill Daily\u00a0<\/i>and I continued to do work as a designer\/graphic artists well into my doctorate. Two of my illustrations are in a Tech Writing textbook (Scientific and Technical Writing<\/i>, Harcourt, 1984).\u00a0 And I did a couple of illustrations for the sloth book.\u00a0 Even though I was fascinated with illustration and design, and addressed both in all of my classes, I didn’t really consider the graphic novel as an important genre, until I read Spiegelman’s\u00a0Maus.\u00a0<\/i>Since then, I have taught classes on the Graphic Novel in general and in\u00a0Jewish Identity and the Graphic Novel.\u00a0<\/i>For the latter course, I draw on ‘traditional novels’ such as\u00a0The Adventures of\u00a0Kavalier and Clay\u00a0<\/i>and Henry Roth’s\u00a0Call It Sleep.<\/i>\u00a0I am fascinated by graphic novels that address science, such as the books by Jim Ottaviani,\u00a0<\/i>Jay Hosler, and more recently physicist Clifford Johnson’s\u00a0Dialogues<\/i>, published by MIT Press.”<\/p>\n

Juan Meneses\u2019s scholarly and teaching work with comics takes a global approach. His publications in comics studies demonstrate this approach, such as his article titled \u201cReconsidering International Comics: Foreignness, Locality, and the Third Space,\u201d in which he considers the possibilities of comics to establish global links between modes of representation (images and text) as well as aesthetic traditions. In the classroom,\u00a0this work has translated in the course \u201cGraphic Novels and Animation from Around the Globe,\u201d in which he and his students study a number of global topics such as immigration, globalization, and war. \u00a0He also incorporates comics in other courses, such as Peter Kuper\u2019s adaptation of Franz Kafka\u2019s\u00a0The Metamorphosis<\/i>, which he assigns in his \u201cModern World Literature\u201d course in tandem with Kafka\u2019s text.\u00a0 More recently he has\u00a0developed\u00a0an interest in the representation of environmental issues in comics.<\/p>\n

Balaka Basu teaches “Superheroes on Screen,” at the 2000 level, which explores how comics travel from panel to cineplex and television and uses these immensely popular movies designed for young people (of all ages) to introduce film and literary theory. She also advises graduate students who study or create superhero comic books for their thesis projects. Superhero comics both reflect and effect important moments in American culture and politics, as is evident from the enormous impact that\u00a0Black Panther<\/i>\u00a0(2018) has had on diversity in film, with its proud Afrofuturism.\u00a0Black Panther<\/i>\u00a0is part of the groundbreaking effort begun in 2008 by Marvel Studios (in association with Disney) to create a shared, continuous universe called the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) with storylines culled and adapted from the original comic books, a phenomenon that Balaka is exploring in a chapter of her current book project.<\/p>\n

As these aforementioned examples illustrate, our English Department is at the forefront of the field that is sometimes\u00a0referred\u00a0to as comics studies.\u00a0 For students who want to\u00a0study comics and graphic novels, our English\u00a0Department is the place to pursue this interest.\u00a0 For anybody who wants to participate in a comics-related convention, HeroesCon is the place to go to this coming weekend.<\/p>\n

Kudos<\/b>\u00a0\u00a0\u2014\u00a0As you know, I like to use my\u00a0Monday<\/span>\u00a0Missives<\/span>\u00a0to share news about recent accomplishments by members of the English Department.\u00a0 Here is the latest news:<\/p>\n

Jeffrey Leak<\/b>\u00a0and\u00a0Malin Pereira<\/b>\u00a0presented papers, with two other colleagues from France and Austria, as part of a panel on Transnational Cultural Kinships and the African American Experience at the biennial conference sponsored by the Society for Multi-Ethnic Studies: Europe and the Americas. The conference took place at Karl-Franzens-Universitat in Graz, Austria (May 30-June 2). Jeffrey’s paper is titled\u00a0\u201cThe Kin You\u2019re Born With, the Kin You Find: Rosey E. Pool, Transnational Kinships\u00a0and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s.\u201d \u00a0Malin’s paper is titled\u00a0\u201cFlying Home? Race, Identity, and Transnational Kinship in Contemporary Black\u00a0Poetry.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Janaka Lewis\u00a0<\/b>just learned that\u00a0Approaches to Teaching the Works of Charles W. Chesnutt\u00a0<\/i>has recently won the Sylvia Lyons Render Award.\u00a0 This award recognizes\u00a0outstanding Chesnutt scholarship.\u00a0 Janaka has a chapter titled “Teaching and Learning from Chesnutt’s Ghosts” included in this book.<\/p>\n

Paula Martinac<\/b>‘s essay “Good to the Girls” has been published in the June issue of\u00a0Hippocampus<\/i>, a journal of creative nonfiction.\u00a0 Here is a link with more information:\u00a0https:\/\/www.hippocampusmagazine.com\/2018\/06\/good-to-the-girls-by-paula-martinac\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Quirky Quiz Question<\/b>\u00a0\u2014 \u00a0Does anybody know the name of the comic book store that sponsors\u00a0HeroesCon?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Last week’s answer: Stockholm<\/strong>
\nAstrid Lindgren grew up in Vimmerby, Sweden, but she spent most of her adult life in the capital of Sweden.\u00a0 What is the capital of Sweden?<\/em><\/div>\n
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Sequential Art and Storytelling\u00a0— This coming weekend, fans of comic books, graphic novels, and manga will gather in Charlotte for the annual Heroes Convention, also known as HeroesCon.\u00a0 One of the largest such conventions in the country, HeroesCon will take place at the Charlotte Convention Center from\u00a0June 15–17.\u00a0 The fact that this event is big […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":202,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-missive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/202"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1476"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1481,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1476\/revisions\/1481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pages.charlotte.edu\/mark-west\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}