Image as Complex Text: The Lost Function of Comics in the English Classroom

• In Event: Marriott Roundtable Session 60
  In Roundtable Session: Representation and Omission: Medium, Genre, and Identity in Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Abstract

This argumentative literature review identifies the four major cases that literacy scholars and classroom teachers makes when justifying the use of comics in the classroom: assisting struggling and reluctant readers, captivating male readers, and stepping stones for more difficult texts. While these reasons for including comics into the English curriculum are well-documented, they serve to demonstrate the simplistic nature of the genre while overlooking the complexity implicit within the form. The author makes the argument that comics should not be reserved for struggling or reluctant readers, rather they should also be read with a critical eye with more advanced readers in order to celebrate the intricate relationship between image and word.

Author

• William Joseph Fassbender, University of Georgia