Tag: literacy

  • New journal article!

    After our blog post for BERA, I am delighted to now share the longer article version with you. In the blog post, we reflect on comics as a teaching tool, using Emina’s story as an example. We argue that comics equip students with visual literacy skills in education, and (maybe more importantly) with critical thinking…

  • Let’s Talk About Human Rights and Forced Marriage! – How We Launched Our Comic

    It has taken about thirteen years to arrive at this moment. From the very first glimmer of inspiration in Hannah’s postgraduate mind, to December 2023, with a comic in our hands and a teaching pack online. This year alone has been a whirlwind of school visits, art revisions, and data collection, as well as feedback…

  • Diversity in Comics: A Reading List

    In an attempt to make this blog a welcoming corner of the internet, I decided to put together a list of classic comics that any beginner would have a great time reading. But I noticed as I was writing the list that the comics skew a little… well… male. They’re written by men. They’re predominantly…

  • My Happy Marriage: An Anime Case Study of Forced Marriage in Popular Culture

    Because I enjoy anime, Netflix’s algorithm has been hurling constant reminders at me about a new series: My Happy Marriage. I had dismissed it as of no interest to me, as I don’t tend to enjoy shōjo anime (given that I am a spooky-hearted thirty-something and the demographic of shōjo is bright teenage girls, this…

  • Batman and Wife: How to Close Read a Comic

    DC Special Series Vol 1 #15 June, 1978 Source: Batman Reddit Before you begin reading this blog, you may want to take a look at Hannah’s excellent post on this Batman narrative, which explores the legality of the situation that Batman has found himself in. It’s fascinating and enjoyable, and it even includes the law of the…

  • Get to Know the Team: Alex

    Who are you? My name is Alex, I am a final year PhD Candidate at the University of Liverpool, researching the influences of medieval culture on nineteenth-century Gothic literature. I know, it doesn’t seem particularly relevant to the project, really, does it? Thankfully, as a research assistant I get to use the skills I have…

  • Teaching with Comics: A Reading Guide

    In the course of the Drawing on Forced Marriage project, I’ve been doing a fair bit of research on how to teach comics to students, and how to teach students with comics. I’ve really enjoyed the process and have learned such a lot, but I realised that the reading list I’ve been compiling would probably…

  • Get to Know the Team: Hannah

    Welcome to ‘Drawing On’, an AHRC-funded project (AH/X004325/1) that explores the ways in which comics can be used to teach difficult topics. We’ve put together this series of little interviews so you can find out more about our team and the project. Who are you? My name is Hannah. I moved from Germany to the…

  • Comics As Educational Tool

    Film, advertisements, the internet – we live in a visual age where we are constantly presented with a vast array of images. Even within a casual chat group between friends, we express ourselves with iconography, peppering our texts with emojis, reaction gifs and memes. It is clear, then, that our students are increasingly immersed in…