David – Page 2 – The Secret Language of Comics

Week Ahead: 3

January 21, 2022 David David's Posts

3	1/25	Dan Roam, “First Draw a Circle, then Give it a Name” (chpt 3) from Draw to Win Stitches — rest of “I was six” and “I was eleven” (64-156)	Literacy Narrative, part 1
	1/27	No class: Return to campus.
	1/30		Sketch 3: Visual Note Taking

On Tuesday, we’ll spend a bit of time discussing the Dan Roam reading, though I don’t think it really requires a lot of discussion. It is a really useful reading, though, on the power of visualization and what you can accomplish with relatively simple drawings. We’ll spend a bit of time at the beginning circling back to Nick Sousanis’s Unflattening, then we’ll dig into the assigned pages from Stitches.

You should publish your Literacy Narrative by Tuesday night. I’ll be reading them on Wednesday and Thursday and then I’ll ask you to begin signing up for individual conferences with me so that we can discuss your essays.

There’s no class on Thursday because you’ll be transitioning back to campus and preparing for face-to-face classes.

Week Ahead: 2

January 17, 2022 David David's Posts

	1/16		Sketch 1: Avatar
2	1/18	Randy Olson, “Introduction: Why Science Needs Story” (pp. 1-21) Allie Brosh, “Adventures in Depression, Part Two“
	1/20	Sousanis, Nick. “The Importance of Seeing Double and Then Some” and “The Shape of Our Thoughts,” from Unflattening. Stitches — first 2/3rds of “I was six” (pages 8-63)
	1/23		Sketch 2: Sunday Sketches

You should be publishing your avatar sketches to your sites tonight (Sunday night). As of midnight, it looks like 7 or 8 of you have published your avatars, so I’ve started to load those on the Student Sites page.

In class on Tuesday, we’ll discuss parts one and two of “Adventures in Depression.” I’ll ask you to apply the rhetorical situation terms we talked about on Thursday to the texts.

In class on Thursday, we’ll spend the bulk of our time discussing the opening section of Stitches. As you read those first 50ish pages I would like you to consider the following questions:

How does Small establish character and setting in the introduction?
This chapter all takes place while David is 6 years old. What are the major subdivisions of the chapter though? You’ll probably decide that there are three (maybe four) major sections in these pages — what is the primary idea being conveyed by each section?
Pick the single page that you find the most compelling or interesting or that you think is the most important in today’s reading. Describe the page in a few sentences. Why is it interesting or important?

We’ll also look at two chapters from Unflattening by Nick Sousanis, who drew Unflattening as his dissertation for Teachers College at Columbia University — it was the first comics dissertation ever and has since been published by Harvard UP and has won a bunch of awards. Sousanis took a job at San Francisco State University a couple of years ago and is building a comics studies program there.

Unflattening will serve as one of the theoretical frameworks for our analyses of comics. Be aware that this comic is probably a little more dense reading than you’ll find Stitches to be, so give yourself a little extra time to work through those 20 pages carefully. I’ll start off our discussion of Sousanis by asking you to consider how effective Unflattening is as an academic, philosophical argument. (Soon we’ll read another theoretical framing text, but in the form of a more traditional essay by Hillary Chute and I’ll ask you to consider how the two pieces are similar and different.) How do the words and images in Unflattening interact together? Is it different than what happens in Stitches?

Your second sketch assignment is due on Sunday 1/23 — for this one you’ll need to use analog tools to draw your sketch because you’ll be incorporating a physical object into the sketch. It’s an exercise in simple visual storytelling and lateral thinking, so have some fun with it. Please make sure to give your sketch a funny or clever title.

Also, you should be working on your literacy narrative, which will be due on Tuesday 1/25.

Kindred being adapted for television

January 13, 2022 David David's Posts

After spring break, we’ll be reading the comics adaptation of Octavia E. Butler’s novel Kindred. Just a few days ago, FX announced that they are moving forward with a TV adaptation of of the novel from Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (who adapted the comic The Watchmen for HBO), Darren Aronofsky, and Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields. The FX exec has such an odd quote praising this TV adaptation, given that it’s literally a story about time travel: “Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has done a phenomenal job of adapting ‘Kindred’ for FX and honoring the legacy and timeless value of Octavia Butler’s groundbreaking novel.” I wonder if whichever PR writer who wrote the press release has ever read the book.

Welcome to The Secret Language of Comics

January 11, 2022 David David's Posts

I look forward to working with you this semester.

Your homework to complete before Thursday, January 13:

Read over this website very carefully as it constitutes the syllabus for this course. Note that the Syllabus page includes a number of subpages, covering such topics as: the course learning outcomes; the texts you need to buy; attendance, participation, and other policies; and how you will be graded. There is also a calendar of readings and assignments; and posts describing the three major assignments (literacy narrative in three parts, tracing pages, and halfa kucha) and minor assignments this semester.
Add this site to your bookmarks. Make certain that you can find your way back here, because you’ll be spending a lot of time visiting these pages over the course of this semester.
Join the class Slack Workspace. Slack is a collaboration and communication tool that our class uses to work together to share ideas, discuss readings, collaborate on projects, and engage with learning.
Sign up for a basic, free WordPress site. (See further information below about choosing a name for your site.) Do not pay anything for this site; choose the free version with an address ending in .wordpress.com. Make sure to hit the “Launch” button to publish your site to the web.
Leave a comment on this post asking a question about the syllabus. Put the URL for the WordPress site you created in the “website” line on the comment form. If you want to receive an email every time a new post goes up on this site, check the “Subscribe to site” box before you submit your comment. The first time you comment, it will not show up publicly until I’ve approved it.
Reply to the survey form at the bottom of this post, which both asks some basic information I’ll need in order to manage communications with you and also asks some questions that will help me get to know you a little bit better.
Read the following two texts: Andrea Lunsford, “Rhetorical Situations” and “Reading Rhetorically” from Everyone’s an Author and Allie Brosh, “Adventures in Depression, Part One” from Hyperbole and a Half. (Note that first link will take you to the PDF that I’ve uploaded to our electronic course reserves, so you will need to login with your Emory netid and password to access the document. The second link goes to Hyperbole and a Half on blogger. Allie Brosh has since published the story in her book, Hyperbole and a Half, which is excellent, but we can use this version on the web for this course.)

A little more on naming your WordPress site

You can choose a URL based on some version of your name (i.e., janestudent.wordpress.com or johndoe.wordpress.com) if you’d like. Using a version of your name has the advantage that you will be building a digital identity on the web based on your name, which can be really helpful. On the other hand, it also means that this site that you’re building will likely come up near the top of web searches for your name, so consider whether that is something you would like.

If you don’t want to publish your coursework on a site with a version of your name, you can also use some sort of pseudonym for your domain name.

It is also perfectly acceptable for your domain name to be a short word or phrase that is easy to remember and spell, and which speaks to some interest of yours or an aspect of your character (for example: my friend Audrey Watters, a noted educational technology scholar and researcher publishes a site called hackeducation.com or one of my favorite art and design blogs is called thisiscolossal.com). If you’re going to choose a title or phrase as your domain name, make sure you think about it very carefully so you don’t show up on one of those lists of the most unfortunate domain names ever, like the design firm called Speed of Art that ended up with a domain name that sounds like it’s about flatulence in a swimsuit. Note that in the case of your site, you’ll be publishing a page that’s a subdomain of WordPress.com, so if Audrey Watters were in this class her site might be called hackeducation.wordpress.com.

Student Information Survey

[formidable id=2]

Sketch 10: Mix Tape

January 6, 2022 David Sketches

Due: 4/17

Tag: sk10

This week, I want you to think about using audio for particular rhetorical situations by creating a mix playlist with a group of songs.

Rules (all of which are breakable, if you have a good justification for why):

I usually think of a mix tape as about an hour of music, but for our purposes let’s aim for 45 minutes or so
Preferably no more than one song by a single artist
Create some kind of consistency and an audio progression as someone listens from beginning to end

Just as giving a speech, writing an essay, or publishing a photograph are rhetorical acts, choosing particular pieces of music in particular situations can also be a rhetorical act — and choosing to curate a specific list of songs that you put together in a particular order, with a particular emotional or intellectual affect in mind, is certainly a rhetorical act. In the case of the music mix you are producing for this assignment, the rhetor is you, the medium is your playlist, and the audience is probably your peers in the class (though you can decide to address some other, fairly specific, audience if you would like).

There is a lot of music in the world, and there are lots of ways to combine music together and lots of people doing so. If you are struggling to come up with ways to craft your mix, I encourage you to either respond to a very specific rhetorical situation (“a mix for my good friend who just went through a bad breakup,” for example, or “a mix to apologize to my friend for not locking up his bicycle when I borrowed it so it get stolen”); come up with a very specific narrative or emotional hook that you want from the songs you include in your list (“songs about the summer” or “songs to prepare for exams to” might work well as hooks that are topical right now); and/or to make up some specific rules for yourself to spur greater creativity (“My Halloween mix can only include songs with the word ‘pumpkin’ in the title” or “all the songs need to include the words ‘new’ or ‘old’” or “every song must be 2 minutes and 42 seconds long“). As Robert Frost once said, “Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down,” so creating rules for yourself about choosing songs might help you to structure the game that you’re playing to make it more fun.

What do you have to turn in?

Create your playlist however makes sense for you — it can be a Spotify playlist that you share via a link; you can use Mixcloud (which will also import Spotify playlists) or Soundcloud; or you can record your vinyl onto MP3s and upload those files to Google Drive or send them to me to host on my server, then embed them on your site from there. Publish a post on your site with the link(s) to the playlist and a numbered track listing that names the songs and artists.

Your mix tape needs an image to serve as the album cover. If you were recording your mix onto cassette tapes, I’d ask you to use gel pens to draw a cover that you’d stick into the little plastic case, but you’re not, so instead create a square image that has the title of your playlist and that serves as a compelling visual representation of your mix. Do not just use the image that Spotify automatically creates from the album covers included in the mix — design your own album cover.

Finally, write a reflection to accompany your mix — explain the rhetorical situation you are addressing, what rules you established for yourself, and how you went about solving the problem your rhetorical situation presents. Articulate the choices you made and why you made them. Finally, think about your mix as an argument (even though it’s not a direct, academic argument) — what are you conveying in your mix and how?

Literacy Comic Reflection

January 5, 2022 David Sketches

Now that you’ve completed your Literacy Narrative Comic, publish a reflective blog post of about 500 words about the writing process, paying special attention to how the work you have done has helped you to meet the Learning Outcomes for this class. That post should link to the page with your literacy comic.

Some other questions you might respond to: How was it different to write your literacy narrative as a comic? How did you think differently once the visual component was added? How did that help you to see the story you were trying to tell in different terms? Was your analytical thinking process any different? How have your thoughts about your alphabetic literacy narrative changed in the process of transforming it into a comic?

I’d also like you to discuss choices you made in creating your comic and to explain why you chose the way you did. Especially if there’s something you were really trying to do in your comic which you felt you couldn’t realize as perfectly as you would if you had a lot more time, more resources, or if you could have hired an illustrator to turn your vision into exactly what you wanted. If there are aspects of your comic where you have a clear sense of what you were trying to accomplish and how you would have done so if some things were different, then explain that in your reflection. Doing so allows you to demonstrate that you have the knowledge you need about this sort of writing even if you have not yet developed all the skills necessary to make that knowledge visible in the final artifact you’ve produced

Hello world!

January 5, 2022 David Uncategorized

Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!

Halfa Kucha Reflection

January 4, 2022 David Sketches

Due: Friday 4/15

Export your halfa kucha slideshow as a set of images (in Powerpoint: File > Export… and then in File Format select jpeg and “save every slide.” Powerpoint will create a subfolder where you tell it to and save each of your ten slides as images). Then in your WordPress dashboard create a new post and upload those images to a Slideshow block.

If you used Google Slides, you can embed the slideshow by going to File > Publish to the web and then selecting settings. It will give you an embed code that you can paste into an HTML block in your post.

Then write a couple of paragraphs reflecting on the process of writing and then giving the presentation. How was it different to construct an argument that you were giving to the class as a presentation than to write an essay? How did you make choices about the structure of your argument? If you made a choice to organize your presentation in a certain way so that your audience would follow it more clearly, is that something that you could also make use of in your written work? Was your analytical thinking process any different?

What decisions did you make about the visuals for your presentation? How did you go about creating an impact for the slides that accompany your spoken words?

What did you learn by giving this type of presentation, where you had no control of the timing of the slides and couldn’t put much in the way of text on your slides, as compared to other presentations you have given? What did you notice about your classmates’ presentations that you might think about incorporating into your own presentations in the future?

What do you think you could have done better in your presentation?

Halfa Kucha assignment prompt

Tracing Stitches and Fun Home: Reflection

January 3, 2022 David Sketches

Once you have completed your Tracing project and published the pages to your site, you need to publish a reflection post as well. The post serves to turn the project in when it syndicates to the class site, and is also an opportunity for you to explain your process in the work you just completed.

Your reflection post should link to the main page for your project and also to the assignment prompt. Tell us in the post what the thesis of your essay is and give a one or two sentence preview of your argument.

You should also address the following questions:

Before writing your essay, you went through a pretty involved process of tracing and annotating two pages from the books. Briefly explain what that process was like for you — probably this was very different from most other writing you’ve done, so try to explain what was useful about the process for you. What productive thoughts or analysis occurred through the act of tracing and annotating?
For this assignment, I asked you to be very conscious of writing an inductive essay with an ABT thesis at the end, which is probably a pretty foreign way to structure an essay for you. How did your writing process change to address this assignment?
This assignment is a close reading exercise focused on identifying aspects of the “secret language of comics,” the series of choices the authors make in crafting comics that probably pass by many readers with little or no conscious notice. Do you feel that this assignment helped you to get in on this secret language? Do you understand Stitches and Fun Home better after having written this project? What’s the single biggest insight you gained about the two books during the process of tracing, annotating, and analyzing these pages (maybe something you “knew” on some level before you started but that you really get now, or maybe something you hadn’t really noticed until you worked on the project)?

Literacy Narrative Comic Reflection

January 3, 2022 David Sketches