Comics and the Narrative of Research

• In Event: Comics as Research: Toward an Imaginative Methodology

Abstract

Research often results in the creation of a narrative, echoing the storytelling lens through which we often see both the empirical and the experiential. Comics increases the dimensions in which we may deliver our narrative, and therefore a richer platform from which to examine and deliver research, as well. Walter Benjamin asserts that “a story is different,” in that “it does not expend itself.” Visual storytelling, then, compounds that ability of the story to continue to contribute to the existing discussion and ongoing discourse of a discipline. Comics exists at the unique intersection of image and text, necessitating attention to the progression of both elements toward the ultimate goal of communicating a concept with its own narrative; that is, the narrative structure of research and delivery. That intersection also implicates the languages of text and image, discrete modes unto themselves, and creates the third language of comics, structurally suited to storytelling. Because comics are based on the creator’s experience, as Muna Al-Jawad describes it, they “link what happens…–'practice’ – with what happens in [the creator’s] head – ‘theory’ – a similar process to analyzing qualitative data.” Comics thus work to communicate the construction of the research narrative.

Author

• Brooke Sheridan, The University of Alaska - Fairbanks