Margins, Gutters, and Futures: Comics as Sites of Critical Literacy and Speculative Cultural Resistance

Session Type: Symposium

Abstract

This panel examines comics and related media as critical sites for theorizing educational possibilities. Presentations address: the reproduction and disruption of colonial schooling tropes in speculative narratives; the formal affordances of comics for representing varied and intersectional identities; the ethical and emotional tensions of pedagogies of care, loss, and surrender; and the critical literacy practices fostered in fan convention spaces. Drawing on culturally sustaining pedagogy, ethics of care, and speculative educational theory, the panel advances interdisciplinary models linking narrative form, identity, and pedagogy. Methodologically, the work integrates narrative inquiry, media analysis, and critical visual approaches.

Collectively, the session contributes to educational research by foregrounding ways in which affect, form, and cultural production can shape liberatory and future-oriented pedagogical frameworks.

Sub Unit

• SIG-Media, Culture, and Learning

Chair

• Larry C. Bryant, Metro State University

Papers

• Pedagogies of Hope in the Shadow of The Empire: Reimagining Learning through Speculative Fiction - Michael B. Dando, St. Cloud State University

• Unrepresentability as an Affordance in Comics About Transition - David E. Low, California State University - Fresno

• Surrendering to Care: Black Canary and a mother/daughter pedagogy of loss - Dani Friedrich, Teachers College, Columbia University

• Too Many Abs: Narrative Inquiry of Critical Noticings Across Comic and Anime Conventions - Karis Michelle Jones, Baylor University

• Speculative Curriculum: Epistemology, The Human & Eve Ewing’s Monica Rambeau: Photon - Sarah Ishmael, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Session Organizer

• Michael B. Dando, St. Cloud State University

Discussant

• Lauren Leigh Kelly, Rutgers University