Talking Comics All Over!

First up, I joined a panel of art-educators in India as part of the celebration of the Arts-Education organization Art Sparks‘s 10th anniversary, including my friend Andrea Kantrowitz (Drawing Thought), Indian science comics maker (Argha Manna – who I’ve corresponded with for years but not met), along with Indian art educators Siddhi Gupta and Amitabh Kumar, hosted by Art Sparks founder Nisha Nair. A wide ranging conversation on the importance of art in education, … I’m not sure if the event was recorded, but I prerecorded some questions in case the tech didn’t work for me to participate in the panel, and they released that here. 

Next, I joined cartoonist and art educator Cathy G. Johnson remotely for a panel at Syracuse Comic-Con on April 19th. We had a lot of fun and discovered lots of intersections in our approaches to teaching comics, good questions from educators in the audience – though apparently (accidentally) not recorded. Details were here.

Then April 21, joined an Applied Humanities Panel at Stanford to talk about how to use one’s Humanities degree in not so expected ways: “Humanities training guides us in the development of analysis and synthesis, teaches us how to express ourselves while taking account of others, and refines our capacity to live in complexity. Applying this training to problems outside of the academy requires innovation and a tolerance for ambiguity but promises to meet the challenges of lived experience through an expansive ethos. The applied humanities is an approach that refuses to be concerned only with abstract theory and is committed to operating in the real world.” Pretty broad range of questions and conversation, I was the least business-focused of the panelists, but I enjoyed the different takes and where the conversation led.

Then I was off to Pennsylvania to do a workshop and give a keynote for a comics-themed event at West Chester University via the fine folks in their English Department. This was in conjunction with their “comic-con” – in which the three classes in the English department that focus on comics all displayed posters summarizing their final research work. One class had taken up Unflattening over the term, and their pieces were solely focused on that that! That was super cool overall and many sharp projects (including one on my dog…), but perhaps my favorite was a student who had taken her trifold poster material, and folded it into a box. She then adorned the exterior of the box with eyes from the book and quotes about seeing from it. She had also cut two eyes directly into the box which when you looked through the different eyes, you got a glimpse of two very differently drawn and lit inner worlds: a dark one representing start of the book and brightly light scene of an open landscape. It was really cool, I was so touched! What I said to her, while it’s nice that people like your book and talk about it, it’s far cooler when the book serves as a jumping off point for their own discoveries to set them going in their own directions, which she most certainly did! She dove in because she had to & followed it where it took her! This project brought to mind one of my favorite responses ever to the work, University Maryland Baltimore County student Alexia Petasis’s choreographed dance to it, which then led to her doing more dance for social justice work. It launched her in new directions she hadn’t imagined before! You can learn more about that and see the dance here. Many other cool things at WCU, really enjoyed all the faculty, students, and other people I had the chance to interact with here. I used to do a lot more of this before March of 2020, and it was fun to feel a bit like those before-times. The comic-con they host is a great idea, a wonderful way to take their learning out into the open. Students created a lot of great projects exploring really heavy themes in the comics they explored. Additionally, through their museum studies program, WCU has a compact space, in which they’ve put together an impressively comprehensive exhibition of comics history. Something I’d like to consider at my own uni… Lots of smart ideas there!

Having mentioned University Maryland Baltimore County students just above, I once again as I do nearly every semester, joined their class for an early morning call while I’m making breakfast as they use Unflattening as part of their interdisciplinary studies foundation courses. They always give me great questions and get me thinking about the work in ways I hadn’t before – a real treat. And I will never forget the dance their student created for it 8 years ago.

I followed this up with late night, friday May 8, talking to an extraordinarily sharp group of Japanese students from a school in Tokyo. Questions about process, about my influences, and more. I’ll recap a few things that were new and stand out. When asked about my favorite children’s movies as an educator, I did go off on Captain Underpants and Matilda. I think CU and Dav Pilkey’s real story of needing to draw (and to move) in the classroom, which only got him in trouble each and every day is such a key lesson to learn, and it really hits home in the movie. And Matilda is maybe more obvious, but no less powerful. Two students asked me questions about nonconformity as demonstrated in Unflattening, and if that meant you had to be an outsider. I really struggled with this, these were big questions that clearly came from personal spaces. Even having felt like we talked about it well then, I’m still thinking on it weeks later… When asked what I thought the biggest threat to our society was in this moment, I started to go into the rise of fascism at home, and then shifted to Ai (which I don’t think aren’t unrelated). This has now come up in all my talks, and I feel so strongly that we simply cannot trade away the struggle and experience that makes us human, for products and imagined efficiency. My drawn statement and minicomic on the subject is here. Finally, a student asked a question about the importance of journalism. A little outside my field, but strongly in my concern. I tied it to an earlier question, in terms of my country, we wouldn’t be in the position we are in if we had a strong journalistic environment (this is not a knock on any particular journalists…). Journalism is essential to democracy – to help us understand the issues we face, to uncover corruption, to create an informed society. And I can’t believe some of the election choices that have happened could be possible the institution of journalism were in a better place. Again, the kids got me thinking, as they always do, and I’m better for it.

Wrapping a great semester now, with the first time Superhero class – we had so much fun! I’ll update on some highlights of the term sometime soonish. And hopefully will be able to dive deeper into drawing the next chapter of Nostos, it’s been an overly full spring… Good thoughts to all. – N