Image-Text Talk: Comics as a Tool for Inquiry

So last May, I presented at the SequentialSmart conference centered around comics and education at Juniata College in southern Pennsylvania. The organizers asked to include that talk in their publication, and so i created an image-text version from the images i shared and a recreation of what I said. That’s now in digital print in Juniata Voices and a good chance to get a sense of my thinking in comics and where I’m going with the dissertation. Check out the image-text PDF of “Comics as a Tool for Inquiry” at this link.

This presentation builds on earlier talks, including one at HASTAC’s conference for which I also made an image-text version – and you can find that earlier version here and see how my thinking on these things has evolved. On that note, I’ve been doing numerous conference and public talks (in addition to teaching) the last couple years, and having to condense my thinking to a 12-minute window has forced me to really distill and find clarity of my ideas. That in turn has helped shaped where I go in the dissertation. And as I finish new pages, they in turn have fed further talks. It’s been a healthy feedback loop and I’m grateful to have has this public interaction to fuel my thought process.

Below, I’ve included a recent quick overview of some thoughts on comics’ capacities that I prepared for the classes I teach, which includes a few further wrinkles to consider. And again, please find the pdf of “comics as a tool for inquiry” here. More pages in the works, specifically building on a lot of things hinted at in the talks, soon, soon. – Nick

P.S. Today (4/10/13) I’m participating in a Cisco Webinar talking a bit of comics theory to setup a presentation on a case study using comics in the workplace. Apparently, anyone can register and listen in on this for free. I’m right at the beginning – it starts at 1pm EST. Link here.