In this column, authors share how inviting students to create Unessays in response to graphic novels like Displacement and Maus opened space for student agency, creativity, and deeper literary and rhetorical analysis.
Cook M. P., & Kirchoff J. S. J. (2017) Teaching multimodal literacy through reading and writing graphic novels. Language & Literacy, 19(4), 76–95. https://doi.org/10.20360/G2P38R
Liinason M. (2024) The role of performativity in comics as activism: Meaningmaking in comic art by Amalia Alvarez and Sara Granér. In Nordenstam A., Fägersten K. B., & Wictorin M. W (Eds.), Comics, activism, feminisms (pp. 19–32). Routledge.
Low D. E. (2015) Comics as a medium for inquiry: Urban students (re)designing critical social worlds [Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania]. ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/entities/publication/b4f8112b-2349-42be-b0e7-cbf2e82c58fa
Low D. E. (2017) Not to be “destoried”: How an academically marginalized student employs comics and multimodal authorship to claim a counteridentity. Ubiquity: The Journal of Literature, Literacy, and the Arts, 4(2), 6–56.