Losh & Alexander was another example of a medium I had never analyzed in an academic setting (comfort zone). I thoroughly enjoyed learning and consuming information of comic book form, and from what I can tell, my classmates also enjoyed it too. Unique to this format is the ability to convey a variety of sentiments through each comic cell/image. Therefore, each cell has a deeper meaning - often times, an extension of the bubble text.
I chose this specific example of my annotations on Losh & Alexander since I used synthesis to bring in another opposing perspective (1.3, Critical Thinking). While Losh & Alexander advocated for reading multiple sources in order for a better understanding of a subject, Gogan had cited research that supported an in-depth exploration of one source only as a better learning method. While I did not provide an answer in my annotations as which is the better method, I believe it is fairly safe to aim for the middle: analyze different sources, but only use a few so that you can explore each one carefully (Critical Thinking).
Those eyes, they just keep staring at me, knowing that some day I will crack and have to read more Understanding Rhetoric. I can't see their mouths but I bet they are laughing at me, they know they've won and I will be reading about issue 4 and 5 in their book.
So I did, I read these two issues and they explained some pretty important ideas.
Issue 4
This whole chapter was dedicated on how one makes a convincing argument. It talks in a professional tone while I sit at my desk, shouting out important things to remember about arguments.
"It is important you represent more than 1 side when presenting an argument!" It yells, making sure everyone will hear it. "Here's a basic cheat sheet of what you need!" It shoves page 153 at me. Written on this page are 4 bold words WHAT (facts) HOW (circumstances) WHO (relationships) WHY (reasons). These are the 4 things that should be the basis of each argument.
There's also another mini sheet attached to page 153 titled: page 160. This sheet talks about other very important aspects of an argument such as evidence, analysis, implications, and context.
"Do you remember Gender and Sexuality for Beginners?" whispers one of the cover faces. "Garbacik made sure to consider more than 1 side of each of her arguments. You can't escape us, you will have to use Rhetorical strategies if you want to succeed in writing!"
Issue 5
I turn the page to move on and suddenly I'm at a crime scene. The police are here and one guy just took off his glasses while making a pun at the dead corpse on the ground. Why someone would wear glasses at this time of night I don't know, but one thing I do know is that these cops are jumping to conclusions! Thankfully there are 2 more detectives (represented by the faces on the cover of the book) who are here to stop the others from making a grave mistake!
"You coppers need to do research! Let us show you how to it effectively!" The good detectives talk about how important it is to keep everything organized when doing research and it's important to label your findings for easy retrieval.
"If you need a quick idea about what good research entails, here's you're source!" The woman says enthusiastically giving out page 188 to the cops. "Some resources are better than others and it depends on which kind of argument you are making! One thing is for sure, though, you must have more than one source!"
"Let me get this straight," cop 1 says "I have to get multiple sources and organize them well. Do I just throw that all together and hope it works?"
"No son, you gotta make your evidence sing! Breathe life into this little guy!" The man tells the cop. " There are a few methods, you can Summarize what the source is about, paraphrase the authors arguments, or add a quote from the source to drive the point home."
"YOU!" The cops pointed at me, "You are under arrest! You have the right to use what you learned in this issue for other classes to effectively argue your theses. You have the right to be more credible in your profession so that your scientific studies can be printed and peer reviewed in authoritative Journals so that others can site your research. Lastly, you have the right to organize your sources making your paper talk less time by easily finding what source you're looking for. Anything you misrepresent or forget to cite will be held against you in the court of law and rhetoric."
Suddenly I woke up in a barber shop, next to me was a talking eraser and a talking pencil.
So, that's it for the issues we had to read. I may have gotten a little carried away, so sorry it wasn't super brief.
Stay tuned for a Halloween Blog where something spooky might just happen *cue menacing laugh*
Review: Understanding Rhetoric: A Comics Textbook to Composition
Because of how much of the work going into re-building Comic Book Masculinity owes to the conversations I had in Boston this past year--at the Modern Language Association in January, at the Northeast Modern Language Association in March, and in conversations with people at the Boston Comics Roundtable--I feel it is right to start off today’s update with information on how to help the city. After Monday’s attack, organizations are seeking donations to help the injured and families of the deceased. CNN , MSNBC, and the Christian Science Monitor have lists of those resources, with information about donating blood and money, and Geek Sugar warns about scams. The State of Massachusetts and the City of Boston also have organized the One Fund, where checks can be mailed to One Fund Boston Inc., 800 Boylston St., #990009, Boston, MA 02199. After Patton Oswalt’s editorial, we need an appeal to some goodness--and, given the week he has had, Oswalt at least brought smiles and laughs to many of us with that epic eight-minute Star Wars/Avengers crossover he imagined (even if Spider-man, the Fantastic Four, and the X-Men cannot be in Disney’s Star Wars or Avengers due to Fox and Sony’s film rights to those other Marvel franchises...).
At the recent meeting of the Northeast Modern Language Association, my co-chair Joel Simundich at Brown University and I had the pleasure to include Elizabeth Losh and Jonathan Alexander on our panel on comics pedagogy. The two professors brought to that day’s discussion of wealth of experience in education. Professor Losh is the director of the Culture, Art, and Technology Program at UC San Diego and the author of Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government, Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster, Miscommunication, and Mistakes. And Professor Alexander is the Chancellor's Fellow at UC Irvine, where he is also the Director of the Center for Excellence in Writing & Communication. Especially for a regional conference such as NEMLA, it is always great to have professors from around the nation and the world to enrich a panel’s topic. In Professors Losh and Alexander’s presentation on their new textbook, Understanding Rhetoric: A Graphic Guide to Writing, their approaches in using comics in the classroom was uniquely suited to our panel’s conversation. I was fortunate enough to receive a copy of the textbook in advance, from the Bedford-St. Martin’s exhibitor table at NEMLA. And as a textbook Understanding Rhetoric fills a gap in college studies by using visual media to teach composition with close attention to visual rhetoric, audience awareness, and written identity. It is a book I look forward to using in future classes.
Illustrated by Minnesota illustrators Kevin Cannon and Zander Cannon (no relation), Understanding Rhetoric takes the form of comics seriously, beyond a thematic organizing tool for the textbook’s chapters and towards using that form as a way to teach students about reading comics, by actually having them read comics. As a comic book fan, I am happy to see a serious--as serious as possible--approach to the superhero genre, as Understanding Rhetoric commits to its thematic organization. The chapters, organized as comic book issues with their own superhero-influenced cover art, is playful in the tights-and-capes tropes oftentimes seen as either too gritty and cliche or too campy and silly. Any textbook that includes a superhero named Metamorph to teach about writing identities--how to take on certain tones and styles, and using certain types of information, in relation to which intended audiences the essay is addressing--already gets my attention as an innovative way to teach composition. Including this kind of character can come off as pandering to readers, something that the writers and illustrators are self-aware of, just as quickly mocking the idea of having students be guided by an anthropomorphic Delete Key and Red Pen. But I found these moments so enjoyable because it gave a sense that Losh, Alexander, Cannon, and Cannon were having fun with the opportunities that a comic book format could provide to a textbook. In addition, any textbook that can sneak in a Dr. Strange figurine on page 15 gets my attention!
As well, the visual sight gags involving Plato and Aristotle lend to that playful atmosphere that loosens up students to find topics in their essays that interest them, rather than taking on essay topics that they think will impress their teachers. From experience teaching composition I would rather see students type five-page essays analyzing differences in portrayals of The Joker in comics and film--with clear sentence and paragraph structure, supporting evidence, and appropriate writing identity--than struggle to write about obscure poems just because that student thinks a teacher would be impressed. Textbooks like Understanding Rhetoric show students that composition classrooms are directed towards teaching form, not to tell students which are the only appropriate topics to choose for college papers. The goal is to learn how to write by drawing from pieces of evidence and from rhetorical positions that show readers the serious scholars we can be--and then use those skills in a variety of careers and life experiences. Students should feel comfortable writing about comic books as much as they would about slave narratives, science fiction, immigration reform, nursery rhymes, parental grade release policies, or the many other essay topics that Understanding Rhetoric approaches.
While the educational content is solid, the book is also an enjoyable reading experience because of Cannon and Cannon’s sight gags drawn from the superhero genre and beyond. Most effective are their illustrations from Issue (Chapter) 2, adapting Frederick Douglass’s Narrative into a comic text. Drawing upon Douglass’s remark that slave kidnappers were akin to “the ferocious beasts of the forest,” Cannon and Cannon build upon Losh and Alexander’s close reading to see how Douglass calls upon readers’ sympathy by making himself more and more into a human being while pointing out the almost animalistic tendencies of those slave kidnappers.
The visual component allows our students to gain a better understanding of nineteenth-century texts while also allowing them to realize the rhetoric skills they have already developed after years of reading comics and also watching films and television shows. The illustrations give students a textbook that hardly panders to them but realizes that they are capable readers and rewards them with in-jokes and visual puns. Part of this more personal approach is owed to the fact that the textbook is largely first-person, as Losh and Alexander speak directly to readers through their illustrated avatars, Cannon and Cannon providing the caricatures of the two professors. As Losh and Alexander’s cartoony counterparts take readers through the pages of the book, their humorous self-aware reaction to the struggles of writing and the inherent campiness of the comic book format puts readers at ease, treating Understanding Rhetoric as a book that can be enjoyed for the quality of its artwork and the clear information about visual rhetoric that it provides. Plus there is something pleasant to see two professors willing to include themselves as caricatures in their own textbook--at certain points Losh and Alexander’s cartoon doubles are at the mercy of Cannon and Canon’s re-illustrations of them in off-model styles.
By its title and form, Understanding Rhetoric owes much to similar comics textbooks, most obviously Scott McCloud’s series, starting with Understanding Comics. As much as I enjoy McCloud’s first book, I have increasingly used his more recent one, Making Comics. While intended for comics artists, Making Comics allows McCloud to reach into his background as illustrator to show what goes through the minds of many artists when they make decisions about how to use panels, text balloons, angles, and narrative to evoke emotions out of readers. And that book is a strong companion to Understanding Rhetoric, based on the attention Losh and Alexander give to “writing identities” and using a superhero motif embodied by Metamorph to show the verbal and visual processes of performing to different audiences of different readers.
Finally, as Losh and Alexander emphasized at their NEMLA talk, Understanding Rhetoric is effective because it shows colleges as institutions attracting diverse student bodies. While following Losh and Alexander’s cartoonish doppelgangers, the textbook is interrupted with attention to their students themselves, Luis, Cindy, and her mother Carol. Showing students across race, class, gender, nationality, ability, and age, Understanding Rhetoric reflects the make-up of many of our classrooms including continuing students. Unlike many comics being published (and the films adapted from them having limited presence of diversity), I was happy to see Losh and Alexander make a textbook where teachers and students look like the composition of our classrooms.
To read more about Understanding Rhetoric, and for instructors to order desk copies, visit BedfordStMartins.com/UnderstandingRhetoric.
[Next week: Part one in a two-part series on using anime to teach nineteenth-century American transcendentalism, gothicism, and transgender portrayals]
