Short post – this week I’m off to San Antonio for the American Education Research Association’s (AERA) annual conference. I’m chairing a session on Arts-Based educational research, and presenting on three panels dealing with comics, drawing, and arts-based research. If you’re attending, come say hello! Among other things, I’ll be presenting with my friend and colleague Andrea Kantrowitz, who is one of the primary organizers behind the Thinking through Drawing conferences. We’ll be talking process and leading attendees through exercises on drawing and comics-making Sunday afternoon. Sunday morning, I team up with Marcus Weaver-Hightower to talk about doing research in comics form (Marcus created a powerful research comic dealing with loss). We co-authored a book chapter on the subject that is forthcoming this fall. The full schedule is here:
Fri 10:35-12:05 Drawing upon Arts-Based Educational Research
Gonzalez Convention Center, Ballroom Level, Hemisfair Ballroom 1

FRI 2:15-3:45 Novel Approaches to ABER

Gonzales Convention Center 206B
SUN 8:15-10:15 How to Draw Comics the Scholarly Way
Gonzales Convention Center 207A
SUN 2:15-3:45 Visual thinking in action through drawing & Comics
Gonzalez Convention Center, River Level Room 6C
I’m nearly at the end of term for my two new comics classes at SFSU and wanted to share some of the visual analysis/annotation pages I have students do (i shared some earlier from my Comics as a Way of Thinking course here). For the first time, I included a page of my own (the single page comic on Entropy I made for the Boston Globe, which I shared process sketches from here) as one of the options students could pick from to annotate. I was so blown away by what two of them did, I share here, along with a page from Grant Morrison & Frank Quitely’s Multiversity and one beautiful annotation from Una’s Unbecoming. I’m always thrilled with what students bring out about the pages and as I get caught up with the courses, will share more about them in the near future. Onward! – N