Researcher
Part of my scholarly agenda examines how literacy sponsors both in and out of the university community can best prepare and help students to be responsible, literate individuals in the 21st century. As such, much of my research focuses on the intersections of writing pedagogy, new media, and multimodal composition within multiple aspects of composition studies. Much of my research, though, centers on comics studies, graphic form, and the interplay of image and text. While I am passionate about all areas of comics studies, there are three sub-disciplines of comics studies that inform my research agenda: digital comics, comics and literacy, and the socio-political rhetoric of comics.
Current Research Projects
Selected Peer Reviewed Articles (More Available Upon Request)
"Using Digital Comics to Develop Digital Literacy: Fostering Functionally, Critically, and Rhetorically Literate Students." In Texas Journal of Literacy Education 5.2 (2017). With Dr. Mike P. Cook
Current Research Projects
- Exploring the semiotic affordances novice comic readers use to navigate digital comics
- Examining the structural and affective relationship between video games, digital comics, film, and print comics
- Analyzing the use of sonic rhetoric in print and digital comics
- Superhero comics as kairotic sites of trauma
Selected Peer Reviewed Articles (More Available Upon Request)
"Using Digital Comics to Develop Digital Literacy: Fostering Functionally, Critically, and Rhetorically Literate Students." In Texas Journal of Literacy Education 5.2 (2017). With Dr. Mike P. Cook
- Literacy scholarship has established the importance of teaching, supporting, and facilitating digital literacy education for 21st century students. Stuart Selber goes a step further, arguing that students must be functionally (using digital technology), critically (questioning digital technology), and rhetorically (producing effective digital texts) literate. In this article, we suggest that digital comics can be an effective text that supports Selber’s digital literacy framework. First, we address the importance of digital literacy before providing an overview of Selber’s framework. Then, we examine different kinds of digital comics available to instructors and teachers. Finally, we summarize how we have used digital comics to meet Selber’s digital literacy requirements.
- Scholarship suggests that writing teachers and instructors looking to integrate multimodal composition into their secondary or post-secondary classrooms should consider graphic novels as a mentor text for multimodal literacy. To help those pedagogues unfamiliar with graphic novels, we offer three titles--The Photographer, Operation Ajax, and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow--students have responded positively to. Herein we offer a summary for each text, a discussion of their uses to teach multimodal literacy, a range of multimodal assignments to pair with each text, and a variety of assessment methods.
- In 2008, the National Council of Teachers of English argued that proficient 21st century readers and writers should be able to adroitly “create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts” (NCTE, 2011, para. 1). Several notable pedagogues and scholars have taken NCTE’s position statement and fashioned similar arguments. In all the discussion, though, of what it means to be a writer in the 21st century, little has been said about how multimodal composition (e.g., texts that use a combination of multiple modes such as alphabetic text, images, and sound) affects students’ perceptions of writing and, to that extent, whether students even view multimodal composition as writing. This article looks to respond to this perceived gap in scholarship. Specifically, we offer the results of an empirical research project conducted at Brick University; this study examines how two first year writing classrooms responded to multimodal composition projects, paying particular attention to how these projects influenced student perception of writing and, similarly, how multimodal composition impacted their writing skills.
- It is well established that the 21st century literate student needs to be able to effectively craft and interpret texts that use multiple communicative modes. Graphic novels are one text type that facilitates such literacy instruction, as the seamless relationship between words, image, and sound (in the form of sound effects) are inherent to the medium. Though there is a wealth of scholarship on the importance of how reading graphic novels facilitate multimodal literacy, there is less scholarship on how writing graphic novels facilitate multimodal literacy. This article demonstrates not only how writing graphic novels enables multimodal literacy, but also provides an overview of five graphic novel creation applications that could be used in the post-secondary or secondary classroom: ToonDoo, Comic Life, Graphix Comic Creator, Creaza Cartoonist, andMicrosoft Word. For each application, we offer strengths, limitations, and a recommendation for use.
- While the NCTE (2008) definition of 21st century literacies is several years old now, the role of the ELA teacher continues to include helping students learn to read and make meaning from a variety of texts and text-types. However, much of the use of multimodal texts in ELA classrooms remains centered on reading and not on student composition. In this article, we address the multimodal composition component of NCTE’s definition, by including reading and writing. We argue for using graphic novels within instructional units, and as mentor texts, to create multimodal texts. First, we discuss the current literature on graphic novels in the ELA classroom. Next, we provide reading suggestions for students, as they learn to interact with and make meaning from graphic novels. Then we offer suggested multimodal composition projects teachers can utilize within a unit including graphic novels. Finally, we discuss options and considerations for multimodal assessment.
- This article challenges digital comics to become a more interactive, immersive medium that actively strives to redefine the reader/text relationship. Extending Scott McCloud's notion of an "infinite cavnas" (discussed in his Reinventing Comics) I draw from Espen Aarseth's definition of Ergodic Literature and Gerard Genette's theory of hypertextuality to suggest that digital comics can--and ultimately should--extend, expand, and amplify their print based counterpart through intentional, complex reader/text interaction. To make such an argument, I first demonstrate how most digital comics make an attempt to remediate paper-based comics and as such, try to re-create the reader/text interaction found in these "floppy" comics. Secondly, through an analysis of multimedia comics such as Nawlz and innovative hybrid comics such as Marvel's AvX, I explore the interactive possibilities that digital tools afford comic book creators and readers alike. Ultimately, I argue that digital comics should take advantage of their unique material affordances and subsequent infinite number of possibilities to re-define how a reader and a text interact and, in turn, avoid becoming a "retro" technology.