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“Chris Gavaler Explores the Multiverse of Comics, Pop Culture, and Politics”

Monthly Archives: December 2023

18/12/23 New Shenandoah Comics: Angie Kang & Robert James Russell

Shenandoah Issue 73.1 (Fall 2023) is now live. It’s the tenth issue to feature comics, and the eighth I’ve helped edit (I happily step aside for occasional guest comics editors, including José Alaniz who curated an amazing selection by contemporary Russian women last spring, and Rachelle Cruz who curated an equally excellent selection in Spring 2021).

We don’t define “comics” on our submission page, because we hope to attract as much variety as possible. When my advanced comics course recently perused back issues, they questioned whether some pieces suited any of the scholarly definitions we examined in class. Sijia Ma‘s “A Hundred Stories,” for example, is a sequence of photographs (which they decided was allowed) but none of them are juxtaposed on a shared page. Another student was happy to call Mita Mahato’s “Lullaby” a comic, but not a “poetry comic,” as it’s termed in her author note, because the “poetry” includes no words.

I don’t think any of my students would challenge the two works in our new issue, Angie Kang’s “The Birthmark” and Robert James Russell’s “How to Make a Full English,” because both share a range of conventions common in the comics medium. And yet they both push at those norms in exciting ways.

If I’d seen Kang’s before publishing The Comics Form last year, I would have included this pair of panels in my discussion of “match cut” juxtapositions:

The technique is common in film, but rarer in comics. The juxtaposition of Kang’s main character sitting in her doctor’s office and then driving is striking because her figure is drawn from the same perspective and in the same position relative to the frame. Or, since there is no sharp black line framing the panel, to the image edges.

That’s another subtle quality I enjoy about her image style, those softer edges, which reveal how the color is not added to a prior line drawing but is an organic and defining quality of the artwork. I also enjoy a quiet meta moment, when she paints an exhaled breath of smoke to resemble a speech balloon. In Italy, comics are called “fumetto,” little puffs of smoke.

Kang also uses speech sparingly, letting her images do most of the narrative work — as with this haunting dream sequence that could stand alone as an abstract comic:

She is also artful with her turns of perspective. The first image below is ocularized from the main character’s literal point-of-view, but then the angle shifts to over-the-shoulder, so no longer also literal but still focalized from her internal experience — as felt even more in the third panel’s zoomed-in intensity. Then that last panel captures her emotional experience by leaping to a detached and distant angle.

Russell explores a different set of comics qualities.

First, he establishes his own image-text format: numbered text begins above each image — is interrupted by a single tall panel — and then finishes below. The first features a double-decker bus, which not only confirms the title’s English setting, but also evokes the two-level, or “double-decker,” approach to text.

The images are simplified in a naturalistic style (comics studies really needs a term for that — I refer to it descriptively as “unexaggerated simplification” in The Comics Form), but with some subtle disruptions.

The black surrounding the next image creates a kind of matte effect that extends the frame — though it could also be interpreted literally as the darkness of the building sharpened by the contrast of the lit window. And, whether visually literal or not, it evokes the main character’s isolated emotional state:

A later panel removes visual ambiguity with a fully expressive use of background color:

And though a panel typically includes a single image, Russell plays with that aspect of the form too, drawing panels within panels:

I also really appreciate the hand-written quality of Russell’s lettering — which adds to a general feeling of memoir, while also allowing a sudden shift in emotional intensity:

And note that pleasantly unexplained shift to a painting-by-numbers conceit — perhaps because, as the rendering of the words becomes more evocative, the representational meaning of the image flattens? I’m not sure, but I love the effect.

Russell and Kang are also wonderfully different, even as they each further refine comics possibilities.

Check them out at the new Shenandoah.

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11/12/23 What Should a Faculty Handbook Say about Academic Freedom?

My school is beginning a process of revising our faculty handbook. The entry on “Academic Freedom” might be a good place to start.

The American Association of University Professors identifies four main elements:

  • Teaching: freedom to discuss all relevant matters in the classroom; 
  • Research: freedom to explore all avenues of scholarship, research, and creative expression and to publish the results of such work; 
  • Intramural speech: freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when speaking or writing as participants in the governance of an educational institution; and 
  • Extramural speech: freedom from institutional censorship or discipline when speaking or writing as citizens. 

That seems fairly straightforward, and when I looked at my handbook, I expected to find some version of it. I didn’t.

Here’s the current entry:

There’s a lot there, so I’ll break it down sentence-by-sentence.

A faculty member “is entitled to full freedom” in two areas: “research” and “publication of the results.” Those two areas match the AAUP’s second category, “Research.” Except at my school those freedoms are contingent on other factors.

A faculty member must perform their “other academic duties” adequately. None are not named but presumably those duties include teaching. Since faculty are evaluated in three areas (teaching, research, and service), service could be another. There is no indication of how “adequate performance” is determined or by whom (I assume by the administration, but is that my chair or my dean or my provost, or all of them collectively, and so then really just my provost and president? And what if the board of trustees decides someone isn’t fulfilling their undefined “duties”?). Regardless, according to the handbook a faculty member does not have the freedom to research and publish if their teaching (and possibly their service) is not deemed adequate.

Also, you can’t make money (“pecuniary return”) from publishing. I make a pittance from my publications, but since I have no “written understanding” with my administration, I am in overt violation of the handbook policy.

What about academic freedom in teaching? The AAUP lists that first, and it’s the first thing that comes to my mind when I hear the phrase “academic freedom.” And yet my school’s policy says not a word on the topic. According to our handbook, we do not have a stated “freedom to discuss all relevant matters in the classroom.”

A form of The AAUP’s “Speech” falls under the second part. It begins:

“Members of the Washington and Lee Faculty are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of the institution.”

In what sense am I an “officer of the institution”? And how does being an “officer” differ from my also being a “member” of the faculty? And what do those have to do with my being a “citizen.” I think the sentence might just be preamble, a sort of rhetorical clearing of the throat. Probably no need to parse the semantic phlegm further.

The second sentence begins:

“When speaking or writing as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline,”

Behaviors other than “speaking or writing” (such as, say, attending a rally) are not included. Why not? Wouldn’t something like “acting as” cover the bases better? AAUP uses the legally broad term “speech,” which is likely best.

Regardless of the actions, the phrase “as citizens” is (again) unclear. The “when” implies that there are times when faculty members are speaking or writing as citizens, and times when they are not. What is the distinction and how is it made? And why should faculty members “be free from censorship or discipline” only when acting “as citizens”?

The AAUP’s “intramural” and “extramural” is clearer. An article by Don Eron in the AAUP journal describes extramural speech as “the kind of thing we say at the city council meeting or in letters to the editor,” while intramural speech is “the kind of thing we say in the classroom, journal articles, and conference presentations.”

If that’s the distinction intended by the handbook’s phrase “as citizens,” then the policy only covers extramural speech, meaning you only “should be free from institutional censorship or discipline” when talking outside of work. There’s nothing about intramural speech – which means that at my school faculty members can be censored or disciplined for things they say in classrooms and faculty meetings.

And even freedom for extramural speech is vague, because of the verb phrase “should be.” An “is” or “will be” establishes a fact, while “should” suggests the “free from” is in some way weaker.

The rest of the sentence is strange for a policy titled “Academic Freedom”:

“but their special position in the community imposes special obligations.”

Is the “special position” distinct from being a member/citizen/officer of the institution and/or learned profession? Is that the same as the “community”? The “imposes special obligations” is rhetorically stronger than the “should be free from” of the previous sentence. And despite the brevity of the previous descriptions, the obligations receive two more sentences: First:

“As persons of learning and edu­cational officers, they should remember that the public may judge the profession and the institu­tion by their utterances.”

Faculty are again “officers,” now “educational” ones, which seems more general than “officers of the institution.” The “persons of learning” is even broader. And, although the handbook is specific to the school, the obligation is equally to “the profession.” Why? And what does “should” mean in this case?

Finally:

“Hence at all times they should be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indi­cate that they do not speak for the institution.”

Accuracy, restraint, and respect are all good things for anyone, including a faculty member of my school, to display. That they are listed under “Academic Freedom” is at best confused. This policy would be more accurately titled “Special Academic Obligations.”

Given my special position and obligations as a citizen, member, officer, and person of learning, I look forward to my school revising this and other faculty handbook policies.

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04/12/23 Teaching Comics (Theory)

This is the final week of my advanced special topics course on graphic novels. By “advanced” I mean it’s a 300-level literature course taken primarily by English majors. I taught it previously at the introductory 200-level which attracts students from across the college. I had intended to maintain both courses, but our administration recently announced what they termed a teaching “reduction” (we will teach one fewer courses every two years but those courses will be larger so that we still teach the same number of students). Since I need to maintain my two other advanced courses (fiction writing and contemporary fiction), this semester’s advanced comics turns out to be a one-off.

I’m still thrilled I taught it – and not just because I got to invite Qiana Whitted to campus for my department’s annual guest lecture and retreat. Working with a small seminar of mostly department majors and minors (plus one Art History student writing a senior thesis on Magneto) has been amazing. And, while I brought in a range of secondary readings in earlier iterations of the course, the 300-level designation allowed me to double down on theory.

When I first had to redesign from a Tuesday/Thursday 90-minute format to a Monday/Wednesday/Thursday 60-minute, I divided a given week’s primary reading between Monday and Friday and moved any secondary reading to Wednesday. That worked surprisingly well. We would devote a whole period to breaking down new theoretical concepts and applying them to the first half of that week’s graphic novel – and then continue the application on the second half during the following Friday discussion.

I kept that structure for the 300-level, doubling the Wednesday reading. Actually, I tripled it and then went back and (reluctantly and often at the last minute) trimmed. In the 200-level, I assigned almost half my own writing – which felt narcissistic, but (I rationalized) it’s the same as giving a lecture. Also, my chapters often summarized and harmonized other scholars, which my students said made the concepts easier to understand. This round, I still included plenty of my own work, but only if it contained some key point not made elsewhere.

The essays vary in length (the bracketed numbers in the list below are the number of pages for each), but density and difficulty are harder to gauge and account for. Sometimes the scholars agreed or expanded on a shared point, but just as often they presented contradictory opinions, requiring students to figure out their own. Jargon is a problem, especially in a multi-discipline area of studies like comics. So on day one, I projected two lists of terms that cluster around the two most central concepts for comics analysis.

Diegesis (diegetic):

  • Narrative
  • Story
  • Storyline
  • Storyworld
  • Sequence (of events)
  • Mental model
  • Schema
  • Spatiotemporal
  • Fabula (Russian)
  • Linear, linearly
  • What images “show”

 Discourse (discursive):

  • Ink on paper, pixels on screen
  • Physical object of the comic book
  • Artist’s marks
  • Style
  • Sjuzhet (Russian)
  • Tabular, tabularly 
  • Symbols that “tell”
  • Surface

On the first day I also asked each student to give a working definition of “comics” – a topic we returned to on the last week. The weeks between I divided by formal concepts and paired them with graphic novels. Some of the pairings felt ideal (how can you teach Beautiful Darkness without applying Witek’s comics modes?), while others felt a bit arbitrary, since essentially every graphic novel displays and benefits from the analysis of all of the formal concepts. Still, they all worked, with Thorogood capping the semester as a kind of formal tour de force.

My graphic novel selection changes each time I teach the course, and while still overall balanced, this semester ended up unexpectedly international and heavy on French authors — which wouldn’t bother me so much if I could pronounce French names more plausibly in my western Pennsylvania accent.

During the semester, students wrote two open-topic essays, pairing any two novels for each, plus two short final exam essays, and lots and lots of daily assignments (all of which I’ll include below).

Here are the weekly reading units:

1. Secondary readings on FORMAL OVERVIEWS:

  • Charles Hatfield, “The Art of Tensions” (p32-67), Alternative Comics (2005) [30pp] 
  • Pascal Lefevre, “Some Medium-Specific Qualities of Graphic Sequences” (2011) [17pp]

Paired with Nora Krug’s Belonging. Additional sources:

2. Secondary readings on STYLE:

  • Mort Walker, Chapters 2-4 (pp 26-65), The Lexicon of Comicana (1980)
  • Joseph Witek, “Comics Modes,” Critical Approaches to Comics (2012) [13pp]
  • Pascal Lefèvre, “No Content Without Form: Graphic Style as the Primary Entrance to a Story” (2016) [16pp]
  • Andrei Molotiu, “Cartooning” (2020) [16pp]
  • Chris Gavaler, “Modes,” (pp39-44), Chapter 2: Image Narration, The Comics Form (2022) [5pp]

Paired with Fabien Vehlmann and Kerascoët’s Beautiful Darkness

3. Secondary readings on LAYOUT:

Paired with Adrian Tomine’s Killing & Dying.

4. Secondary readings on WORDS:

Paired with Ronald Wimberly’s Prince of Cats. Additional sources:

5. Secondary readings on IMAGE RELATIONSHIPS:

  • Scott McCloud, “Blood in the Gutter,” Understanding Comics, (1993) [34 comics pp]
  • Ann Miller, “5.1.3.1 Tressage (Groensteen’s ‘general arthrology’ code),” Reading bande dessinee (2007), p. 95-97 [3pp]
  • Thierry Groensteen, “The Art of Braiding” (2016) [10pp]
  • Neil Cohn, “Visual Narrative Structure” (2013) [18pp]
  • Chris Gavaler, Chapter 5: “Juxtapositional Inferences,” The Comics Form (2022), pp 113-127 [14pp]

 Weng Pixin’s Let’s Not Talk Anymore. Additional sources:

6. Secondary readings on VIEWPOINT:

  • Laura Mulvey, “Woman as Image,” from “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” (1975) [5pp]
  • Randy Duncan, “Image Functions: Shape and Color as Hermeneutic Images in Aesterios Polyp,” pp 43-54, in Critical Approaches to Comics (2012)
  • Silke Horskotte and Nancy Pedri, Experiencing Visual Storyworlds: Focalization in Comics, Chapter 1 (2022) [27]
  • Gavaler, “Focalization,” pp 55-59, in Chapter 2, The Comics Form (2022) [4]

Paired with Jul Maroh’s Blue is the Warmest Color. Additional sources:

7. Secondary readings on ONE-PAGE COMICS:

  • Summerfield Baldwin, “A Genius of the Comic Page” (1917) [6pp] http://john-adcock.blogspot.com/2012/04/genius-of-comic-page.html.
  • Umberto Eco, “A Reading of Steve Canyon” (1965) [6pp]
  • Umberto Eco, “On ‘Krazy Kat’ and ‘Peanuts’” (1985)
  • Mark Newgarden and Paul Karasik, “How to Read Nancy” (1988) [7pp]
  • Roy T. Cook, “Why Comics Are Not Films?”, from The Art of Comics: A Philosophical Approach (2012)

Paired with Pascal Jousselin’s Mister Invincible: Local Hero

and

George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, 1916-1920 Sunday selection from  https://joel.franusic.com/krazy_kat/.

8. Miscellaneous secondary readings:

Paired with Zoe Thorogood’s It’s Lonely at the Centre of the Earth.

9. Secondary readings on DEFINITIONS:

  • Scott McCloud, Chapter 1: “Setting the Record Straight,” Understanding Comics (1993) [22pp comics]
  • Neil Cohn, “Undefining Comics” (2005) [11pp]
  • Aaron Meskin, “Defining Comics” (2007) [11pp]
  • Roy Cook, “Do Comics Require Pictures?” (2011) [12pp]

DAILY ASSIGNMENT:

For each reading, select 3 passages of interest to you.

  • For each passage, include an excerpt/photo, page number, two analytical questions, and related pages list.The first question should focus on just the passage.
  • The second question should address an overarching issue or pattern that relates to other textual moments.
  • Include page numbers for at least two of those related passages for the second question.
  • Written responses to the questions are not required, but be prepared to lead discussion and introduce your own insights.

PAPER TOPICS:

Monday:

  • Create a combined document that includes:
    • all of your daily question assignments and
    • my Canvas comments after each assignment.
  • Read the whole document and list ideas that repeat across multiple assignments (those could be the start of paper topics).
  • Select and expand on 3 potential topics, each combining any two of the graphic novels. Write an involved paragraph for each potential topic. 
  • List 5 of our secondary sources to use as tools in your analysis. Write 2 sentences for each explaining the specific analytic tool.

Wednesday: Partial draft (minimum of 4 complete pages or 1,200 words)

Friday: Complete draft (minimum of 8 complete pages or 2,400 words)

FINAL EXAM:

The final exam is take-home and open-book. It consists of two 1,000-word essays (each must fall between 900 and 1,100 words). Works Cited lists are necessary, but are not part of the word count. Each essay requires six secondary sources; no more than two may overlap between essays, so you will use a total of at least ten different secondary sources. You will have until the end of the exam period to upload your essays in a combined document on Canvas. You should devote roughly the equivalent time and effort that you would to prepare for a traditional, closed-book exam, and then to take an exam during a three-hour exam period. 

ESSAY ONE:

Select a comic to analyze. The comic cannot be one of the four you’ve written about in your two major essays. Analyze the comic using six different works of comics scholarship that we studied during the semester. The essay does not need to present a unified argument. You are instead demonstrating your ability to apply tools of comics analysis to a comic we have not studied together. Be sure to briefly cite elements of the scholarship in your essay using internal citations. Quote with precision. Also include screenshots of your visual examples.

ESSAY TWO:

Develop an argument that relates six scholars from six secondary readings.

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