Reuniting Visual and Verbal: Integrating Comics for Expansive Thinking Across the Curriculum

• In Event: Disrupting Representations in Research

Abstract

The current over-emphasis on standards sacrifices a nimbleness of mind for an educational system ordered around a limited notion of intelligence. Over-privileging the verbal as the sole path to serious, rational thought limits the possibilities for our understanding and making meaning. This paper seeks to show how comics, in their fusion of the visual and verbal, are a complex site for engagement and depth of expression, well-suited to capture the richness and complexity of our thinking. Their inherent wholeness makes them a natural fit for making interdisciplinary connections and facilitating creative discoveries. In combining multiple modes, comics hold the promise and power of expanding our seeing and hence our thinking, and thus demand consideration within a broader educational context.

Author

• Nick Sousanis, Teachers College, Columbia University