Matching Items (6)
Description
In Mistvon, everyone is happy. The people there go about their daily duties with wistful smiles, and unburdened hearts, their worldly cares both trivial and meaningless. Jobs have been abolished, people are financially set, and everywhere the gleaming city of Mistvon burns brightly, a beacon of mankind. And yet, from the shadows, the Gentlemen lurk. They rule the citizens of Mistvon with an iron thumb that few even realize exists, destroying their creativity and robbing them of their free will; a result of the mysterious Avatos. Because of this, Gaven Vos, a citizen who has seen the truth, and is under the employ of the enigmatic Creator, must free Mistvon from the clutches of the evil Gentlemen. But, is the Creator truly what he says he is? And is their journey truly righteous? Through this, a story of political discourse, betrayals, and ambiguous morality, these questions are answered. But, the ultimate question may not be; do the ends justify the means?
ContributorsCawthon, William Marshall (Co-author) / Fleck, Tyler (Co-author) / Facinelli, Diane (Thesis director) / Stewart, Karen (Committee member) / Holman, Christine (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / School of Politics and Global Studies (Contributor) / School of Social Transformation (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
Abstract Retrograde presents questions about the creation and value of art through a graphic novel. Materials used to create the work were illustration paper, ink, brushes, and printed screen tones. The piece was created in four stages: first, each panel was sketched into the first draft; second, the sketch was researched and fully developed into a complete drawing; third, the sketch was completely traced with ink and texture was added; finally, the drawing tones were added with ink and screen tones. The plot of Retrograde revolves around the protagonist, Vera, as she attempts to find a place for her art in an artistic community that rejects her for her lack of commercial success and for the advantages she got through connections. When Vera appears to have succeeded, a sudden plot twist reveals a conspiracy which undermines her success. By following Vera, the novel illustrates a corrupt artistic society in which the value of art is established by a small amount of artistic elites. The written portion of the project expounds on the various ideas that drove the novel, including how art forms like graphic novels come to be situated low in artistic hierarchies and how interpretations can be negatively guided by already established institutions. Among some of the theorists referenced within the paper are Walter Benjamin, Clement Greenberg, and Susan Sontag. In conclusion, the project illustrates an inclination to judge art by potential commercial value and by already established hierarchies, limiting the possibilities of new interpretations and shifts in those same hierarchies. Keywords: art, art theory, graphic novels
ContributorsCervantes, Liliana (Author) / Dove-Viebahn, Aviva (Thesis director) / Solis, Forrest (Committee member) / School of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies (Contributor) / School of Art (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2016-05
Description
This paper serves to explore how comic books have managed to become a pillar of today’s pop culture, yet the core product, the comic books themselves, continually fails to find their way into the hands of a populace receptive and willing to purchase them, as a result of a mismanagement of marketing, with a focus on digital platforms like social media, and the use of Marvel Entertainment as a primary example. In addition to this analysis, I have endeavored to carry out a reading unit designed in collaboration with Lynne Molina of Boulder Creek High School, as a means to poll over 130+ students for responses pertaining to both their ability to consume and respond to a graphic novel in a similar manner to that of a typical piece of literature, as well as their exposure to marketing for comics for the creative project portion of the thesis.
ContributorsStarkey, Gage Robert (Author) / Wallace, Julia (Thesis director) / Gohr, Michelle (Committee member) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
Over the last twenty years, comic books and graphic novels have slowly found their way into the field of education. Scholars have used this time to study the opportunities afforded by these “Graphic Novel Classrooms” and have found a plethora of strategies and theories to support students and teachers alike. However, history and social studies classrooms are largely left out of this discourse. This absence is perplexing, as these classrooms spend an enormous amount of time analyzing texts and images while building essential literacy skills. Through primary and secondary sources, these history classrooms discuss author intent and ruminate on imagery and themes in much the same way as classrooms that assign graphic novels. Despite this, few scholars advocate for the use of graphic novels in the history classroom. By combining modern theories of literacy education, historical education, and developmental psychology, this thesis concludes that the use of graphic novels in secondary history classrooms creates unique and powerful opportunities in education that have gone largely ignored. This relationship is inherently benefitted by theories of historical thinking and historical empathy, both of which work together to teach history as a process of humanistic understanding and discovery rather than a memorization of names and dates. This thesis accomplishes this by analyzing multiple historically-based graphic novels, deconstructing their contents alongside Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud. This comparison is used to explore what makes the graphic novel inherently beneficial to the history classroom. Many supposed challenges of the graphic novel in the history classroom, such as inherently subjective representations of history, actually add to the process of historical discovery. Through subjective imagery, students are allowed to think critically and compare accounts to determine the “how” and “why” of these representations. This thesis concludes with a classroom guide, taking the graphic novels discussed throughout and designing lesson outlines to be used in any history classroom. Additionally, this thesis highlights the need for change within historical education. Many historical educators find themselves lacking in time to take on assigned readings, resisting the need for exploration and discovery, or failing to recognize the accessibility of the graphic novel in their classroom.
ContributorsDeterding, Zachary (Author) / Schmidt, Peter (Thesis director) / Anthony, Charles (Committee member) / Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
This dissertation explored the literacy practices that developed around comics when two secondary teachers (one AP Science and one AP English) used comics in their classroom instruction for the first time. It also explored the ways the teachers and their students positioned comics within their specific classroom contexts. Historically, comics are a marginalized medium in educational circles—widely considered non-academic despite the recognition by scholars for their sophistication as a multimodal medium. Scholars, librarians, teachers, and comics authors have made the case for the inclusion of comics in educational contexts citing their ability to support the literacy development of struggling readers, engage reluctant readers, promote lifelong reading, and convey information visually. However, the roles comics can play in educational contexts are still under researched, and many gaps exist in the literature including a lack of real world contexts and clearly reported instructional strategies. This study aimed to fill these gaps by reporting the literacy practices that students and teachers develop around comics, as well as contextualizing these practices in the classroom contexts and students’ and teachers’ experiences. Drawing from a social semiotic view of multimodality and the view of literacy as a social practice, I conducted a qualitative case study using ethnographic methods for data collection which I analyzed using an interpretive framework for qualitative data analysis and constant comparative analysis. I found three literacy practices developed around comics in these contexts—Q&A, writing about comics, and drawing comics. I also found that teachers and students positioned comics in four primary ways within these contexts—as a tool, as entertainment, as a medium, and as a traditional form of literature. Based on my findings, I developed three assertions: 1) there is a disconnect between teachers’ goals for using comics in their instruction and the literacy practice that developed around the comics they selected; 2) there is a disconnect between the ways in which teachers position comics and the ways in which students position comics; and 3) traditional views of literature and literacy continue to dominate classrooms when multimodal texts are selected and utilized during instruction.
ContributorsKachorsky, Danielle Perrine (Author) / Serafini, Frank (Thesis advisor) / Gee, Elisabeth (Committee member) / Marsh, Josephine (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
Description
While the African American civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s is one of the most famous and celebrated parts of American history, rhetoric scholars have illuminated the ways this subversive movement has been manipulated beyond recognition over time. These narrative constructions play a role in preserving what Maegan Parker Brooks calls the "conservative master narrative of civil rights history," a narrative that diminishes the work of activists while simultaneously promoting complacency to prevent any challenge to the white supremacist hegemony. This dissertation argues that the graphic memoir trilogy March by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin, and Nate Powell challenges this conservative master narrative through visual rhetoric, in particular through the comics techniques "braiding" and "weaving."
Braiding occurs when authors create "webs of interrelation" (Miodrag 134) by repeating a technique throughout the text, which can sometimes involve a secondary narrative (Groensteen). Braids are associations in the network of panels of the comic that go beyond the parameters of strictly linear storytelling as panels echo those the reader has encountered before. The braids in March compare the past and present through a direct juxtaposition of January 20, 2009—the inauguration day of Barack Obama—with John Lewis' activism from 1959 to 1965. While this juxtaposition risks reinforcing a progress narrative that suggests racism is in the past, in fact, the braided inauguration scenes help the reader connect the moments of the past with their present, calling to mind the ways white supremacy endures in contemporary America. Weaving refers to the reader’s action of moving back and forth in the comics narrative to create meaning, and artists use techniques that facilitate this behavior, such as leaving out or minimizing significant cues and creating a sense of ambiguity that leads the reader to become curious about the events in the sequence. Weaving can disrupt an easy linear narrative of depicted events—such as Fannie Lou Hamer's testimony at the Democratic National Convention—as artists present several opportunities for the reader to interpret these stories in ways that challenge a conservative master narrative of the events in the trilogy.
Braiding occurs when authors create "webs of interrelation" (Miodrag 134) by repeating a technique throughout the text, which can sometimes involve a secondary narrative (Groensteen). Braids are associations in the network of panels of the comic that go beyond the parameters of strictly linear storytelling as panels echo those the reader has encountered before. The braids in March compare the past and present through a direct juxtaposition of January 20, 2009—the inauguration day of Barack Obama—with John Lewis' activism from 1959 to 1965. While this juxtaposition risks reinforcing a progress narrative that suggests racism is in the past, in fact, the braided inauguration scenes help the reader connect the moments of the past with their present, calling to mind the ways white supremacy endures in contemporary America. Weaving refers to the reader’s action of moving back and forth in the comics narrative to create meaning, and artists use techniques that facilitate this behavior, such as leaving out or minimizing significant cues and creating a sense of ambiguity that leads the reader to become curious about the events in the sequence. Weaving can disrupt an easy linear narrative of depicted events—such as Fannie Lou Hamer's testimony at the Democratic National Convention—as artists present several opportunities for the reader to interpret these stories in ways that challenge a conservative master narrative of the events in the trilogy.
ContributorsBoykin, Jessica (Author) / Miller, Keith D. (Thesis advisor) / Lamp-Fortuno, Kathleen (Committee member) / Ore, Ersula J. (Committee member) / Serafini, Frank (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2019