At the Boundaries of What Can Be Said and What Can Be Shown: Urban Students Creating Comics to Engage in Social Critique

• In Event: 66.080 - Roundtable Session 26
  In Roundtable Session: 66.080-13 - Multiliteracies and Multimodal Approaches to Young Adult Authors

Abstract

This paper looks at two data corpuses – each of which centers on one of two urban 5th graders’ comics authoring practices – to situate multimodal meaning-making within larger spheres of critical inquiry. The paper uses a range of qualitative data to demonstrate how comics, as a hybrid medium, is “structurally equipped to challenge dominant modes of storytelling” and invites young authors to agentively enact cultural identity and engage in critique. This paper juxtaposes students’ multimodal compositions against the landscape of remediation that minoritized children and youth typically encounter in schools.

Author

• David Eric Low, California State University - Fresno