I look forward to working with you this semester.
Your homework to complete before we meet the next time, on Wednesday, September 4:
- Read over this website very carefully as it constitutes the syllabus for this course. Note that the Syllabus page includes a number of subpages, covering such topics as: the course learning outcomes; the texts you need for the class; attendance, participation, and other policies; and how you will be graded. There is also a calendar of readings and assignments; and posts describing the three major assignments (literacy narrative in three parts, tracing pages, and halfa kucha) and minor assignments this semester.
- Add this site to your bookmarks. Make certain that you can find your way back here, because you’ll be spending a lot of time visiting these pages over the course of this semester.
- Sign up for a basic, free WordPress site. (See further information below about choosing a name for your site.) Do not pay anything for this site; choose the free version with an address ending in .wordpress.com. Make sure to hit the “Launch” button to publish your site to the web.
- Leave a comment on this post asking a question about the syllabus. Put the URL for the WordPress site you created in the “website” line on the comment form. If you want to receive an email every time a new post goes up on this site, check the “Subscribe to site” box before you submit your comment. The first time you comment, it will not show up publicly until I’ve approved it.
- Reply to the survey form at the bottom of this post, which both asks some basic information I’ll need in order to manage communications with you and also asks some questions that will help me get to know you a little bit better.
- Read the following two texts: Andrea Lunsford, “Rhetorical Situations” and “Reading Rhetorically” from Everyone’s an Author and Allie Brosh’s, “Adventures in Depression, Part One” from Hyperbole and a Half. (Note that first link will take you to a PDF that I’ve uploaded to our electronic course reserves, so you will need to login with your Emory netid and password to access the document. The other link goes to Hyperbole and a Half on blogger. Allie Brosh has since published the story in her book, Hyperbole and a Half, which is excellent, but we can use this version on the web for this course.)
A little more on naming your WordPress site
You can choose a URL based on some version of your name (i.e., janestudent.wordpress.com or johndoe.wordpress.com) if you’d like. Using a version of your name has the advantage that you will be building a digital identity on the web based on your name, which can be really helpful. On the other hand, it also means that this site that you’re building will likely come up near the top of web searches for your name, so consider whether that is something you would like.
If you don’t want to publish your coursework on a site with a version of your name, you can also use some sort of pseudonym for your domain name.
It is also perfectly acceptable for your domain name to be a short word or phrase that is easy to remember and spell, and which speaks to some interest of yours or an aspect of your character (for example: my friend Audrey Watters, a noted educational technology scholar and researcher publishes a site called hackeducation.com or one of my favorite art and design blogs is called thisiscolossal.com). If you’re going to choose a title or phrase as your domain name, make sure you think about it very carefully so you don’t show up on one of those lists of the most unfortunate domain names ever, like the design firm called Speed of Art that ended up with a domain name that sounds like it’s about flatulence in a swimsuit. Note that in the case of your site, you’ll be publishing a page that’s a subdomain of WordPress.com, so if Audrey Watters were in this class her site might be called hackeducation.wordpress.com.
How will the different assignments affect our overall grade for the class (percentage-wise)?
Read through the Course Assessment page. We’ll talk (a lot) more about ungrading and portfolios over the course of the semester.
I am looking forward to learning about the integration between comics and emotions that the author wants to share!
Agreed! Looking forward to our discussions.
Will there be a midterm for this class? Also, when are your office hours?
No, there are no exams in this class — just writing projects. I’ll be updating the front page with office hours soon. It will be Mondays 11:30-12:30, plus I’m widely available to make appointments at other times.
Do we need to buy the books that we are going to read in this class on Amazon beforehand?
You don’t have to go through Amazon. And I know in the past students have found PDF versions of some of the books online or checked out one or more texts from the library.
But yes, you need access to a copy of the book in time to read it before we discuss it in class.
When do we have to purchase or borrow the books that we will be reading? Also, which one of the list is your favorite one to read?
We don’t start discussing the first book until 9/16, so you have a couple weeks.
I can’t just pick a favorite! There were at least another half dozen books I wish we could read that I had to jettison to get the list to here, so I think all of these are powerful texts.
I know we have to complete weekly sketches, but how often do we get to create full comics, or is that just a final project?
There is one larger comic project but it’s basically at the midpoint of the semester. It’s the second phase of the literacy narrative.
Your site is not yet fully launched. When I go to it I see a blue splash page that says “Coming Soon.” When you go to your site, there should be a line of text (iirc it’s near the top of the page, under the title, and easily missed) that says you need to click one more button to launch the site.
What are the expectations for annotations? Would you say it is better to get a physical copy of the texts or an online version?
Which book is your favorite to cover?
I honestly don’t think I can narrow it down to one. I had to work pretty hard to narrow our reading list down to 6 books and I think all of them should be really interesting to read and discuss this semester.
Do you have any suggestions for how we should manage our coursework? For example, should we do the reading on one day, the Sunday sketch the next, both on the same day, etc.
Here’s my honest advice: you should experiment with different strategies this semester and take note of what works best for you. We’ll talk about this over the next few weeks, I’m sure, but my sense is that very few of you had much freedom throughout your secondary educational experiences to explore and decide what works best for you. One of my top goals this semester is for each of you to leave this semester with a bit of experience with a bunch of different techniques so that in the future, when you are faced with a difficult writing task that you don’t already know how to tackle, you will have multiple potential approaches in your tool belt that you can try.
What do you think the most useful tool or learning outcome we will learn this semester?
Along the lines of my comment to Alfred, I don’t so much think there is one tool that will be most helpful for all of you as I hope to introduce y’all to a bunch of different tools with the expectation that some of them will work really well for you and others will work really well for them. I’ll be really curious to hear at the end of the semester what you have found the most interesting and/or useful.
I read that there will be “Written, Aural, Nonverbal, [and] Digital” work to turn in for this class. What would some of these look like? (Presentations, performances, etc?)
Yes, the Halfa Kutcha presentation will include body language, aural and oral modes, and visual skills with your slides. There is one sketch assignment where you’ll create a music playlist for a specific rhetorical situation and another where you’ll take a photo that recreates a scene from a movie. You’ll produce a fairly traditional written essay after tracing pages from two comics. You’ll also transform a traditional prose alphabetic essay into a comic.
Do you know if the books are in the emory bookstore? Also will our weekly sketches need to be in color, black n white, or just preference?
They are not currently in the Emory bookstore. I was very late submitting them to the bookstore this semester. However, these texts should come in quickly and/or you should be able to get the first book quickly from Amazon or Barnes and Noble and then the rest of the texts should be in the bookstore in plenty of time.
How will our class time be used normally (when there aren’t any student presentations)? How often will we have class discussions?
We’ll spend the bulk of our class time discussing the texts we’ve read, sometimes with me leading the whole class but frequently in small groups or pairs. I’ll start of class fairly often having you write individually on some question before we discuss it.
What are your expectations on the sketches? For example, how well-drawn do the sketches have to be?
I don’t care about your artistic aptitude. What I really want if for you to engage with the sketch assignment and learn what you can from it. I expect you to take some risks, do things even when you don’t already know how to do them, and to be able to reflect on what happened for you when you did.
Sorry, I forgot to include the URL for my website.
How many class time will we spend on each comic?
We’ll spend roughly two weeks on each book-length text.
I am very excited to take part in this course! The one question I had is based on the narrative comic we will create during the semester. Is this comic we make based on any story we would want it to be? Could it be based on a personal story reflection or historical non-fiction?
Thanks Jason! The comic will be a revised version of the literacy narrative that you’ll draft as a prose essay first, starting very soon.
What were the requirements of our avatars? Also where would like us to submit them?
You can find the full assignment prompt here. Publish the avatar image on a post to the website that you created.
Is there any text that didn’t fit in the course plan for this semester that you wish you could’ve had space for?
Yes, quite a few. I would really like to teach Ducks by Kate Beaton and/or Paying for the Land by Joe Sacco, but couldn’t get them to fit in this course.
In the collaboration section, there’s a comment about projects and teamwork in class. Are these projects typically done in class, and is it more group or individual work?
There will be some group work in class. I don’t have a full formal group project in the syllabus this semester, but I’ll expect you to collaborate together in multiple different ways. Most of your work will be individual but you’ll be responding to and incorporating the ideas of your classmates in the work that you do. For example, we’ll all collaborate on publishing work to this website — as of the first day of class, I had written everything here, but fairly soon there will be far more work on this site by all of you than there is by me.
Is the Halfa Kutcha, a group project or something each of us has to do individually?
It’s an individual presentation.
Is a digital copy of the books acceptable, or would you prefer we have a physical copy?
Yes, a digital copy is acceptable. I’d prefer that you have physical copies but I understand how expensive it is to be a student and am okay with digital. You might need to come up with some workarounds for the sketching pages assignment on Stitches and Spinning.
What is the best way to succeed in your class? Also what is your favorite superhero graphic novel you have ever read?
The best way to succeed is to come in to class having done the reading and thought about it, ready to engage in discussion. And to be willing to experiment with new ways of doing things that you might find a little strange or uncomfortable, but that might offer you something useful.
How many books do you read in a month on average?
I don’t really keep track, though sometimes I think I should. I read a lot for work so I do a lot less pleasure reading now than I used to, at least if you’re counting novels and similar such works.
When will we need to get each book by?
The Schedule page has the entire semester mapped out. We’ll discuss the first 60 pages of Stitches on 9/16, so you’ll need the book in time to read those pages before then. We’ll start discussing Spinning two weeks after that.
Is this our class slack channel? Would it be fine for me to purchase ebooks for the required comics? And also is there any chance that we will be able to see other students or even your answers for the student information survey?
I decided at the last moment not to use Slack this semester and thought I had removed all the references to Slack from the site — sorry if that was confusing. Yes, digital versions of the comics are okay. The information survey is private so I am not going to publish it, but you can talk to your peers and ask them their favorite books and movies ;-).
I’ve been publishing on the web since before 2000 — I started my own hand-coded blog before I knew there was any such thing as a blog. My list of favorite books is too long to go into but right now the one that comes to mind as a favorite is The Hobbit, but that might just be because I was thinking about reading it out loud to my children recently. My favorite band is The Mountain Goats and I am currently playing guitar in a Mountain Goats cover band.
During this semester, will we improve on our photo editing and digital design skills?
Yes, almost certainly. Out Visual Thinking learning outcome hits on those skills to some extent. I’d say that skill at photo editing is not directly something that I will teach in the class and it’s not something this class is specifically designed to challenge you to improve in; however that’s a skill that you’ll make use of and get better at.
Website link: https://willengrd101.wordpress.com/
What’s something that students who take this course are usually surprised by?
What do “individual conferences” look like when they are not in an individual setting but in a small group? Does going to office hours count as an individual conference?
Most of our conferences will be one on one but when I meet with students in small groups, it’s not so different really. There will be at least one, probably two, individual conferences specifically to give you direct feedback on writing you have done, but otherwise yes coming to office hours is also similar to conferences and “counts” too.
Will our class meetings be recorded? I saw we would have a canvas page for our class.
I have published a Canvas page. I don’t expect to record classes this semester (if there was a reference to doing so someplace, my apologies — during the more active phases of the pandemic, I did record classes because so many students were going in and out of quarantine).
I know that we have to get the books on our own but is it ok for them to be digital copies?
Yes
During this class, will the analysis be primarily based on visual aspects of the comics or literacy aspects? Or will it be a mix of both?
We’ll definitely do both! Within the medium of comics they are intrinsically interconnected.
Sorry I forgot to type in my Website when commenting.
How often will we be tasked with creating comic strips, and what criteria will they be graded on?
There are a couple of sketch assignments that have you make 3- and 4-panel comics and then the second part of the literacy narrative. The grading criteria for this course are published here.
What is the most user friendly website or app for making comics?