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University  \nIn a discussion with Harvard President Drew Gilpin Faust entitled “Do We Need to Rescue the Humanities?”, writer and cultural critic Leon Wieseltier answered with a resounding yes. We live in a “Republic of Opinion,” he asserted, and the humanities prepare us to be citizens of that republic. He argued that the humanities develop our imagination, that imagination “combat[s] tribalism” through empathy for others, and that empathy for others creates ethical citizens. Put this way, the stakes could not be higher. As a professor at a land-grant, state university, populated by a majority of students who grew up in small, insular communities across the upper Midwest, my imperative to lead students along this trajectory is clear. I strive to create assignments that push them to use their imaginations in different ways, to develop creative capacities in the literature classroom that will translate into practical skills in the workplace and empathetic action in the world. One such assignment involves students creating comics, a project I have assigned in two different literature courses in lieu of a final paper or exam. In the first course, Introduction to English Studies, students created a comics narrative about their identity as English scholars. In the second, Literature of Diverse Culture, students interpreted a portion of a course text by adapting it into a comic. In this essay, I will outline the theoretical and practical value of this assignment and provide a detailed description of its implementation.  \nRecent scholarship charges English instructors to reimagine what constitutes literacy and to incorporate various modes of texts in their courses. Jennifer Sanders and Peggy Albers assert that “as teachers, we have the responsibility to provide students with a range of opportunities that enables them to expand their repertoire of ways in which they can communicate what and how they know (3). The NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English)“Position Statement on Multimodal Literacies” claims: “In personal, civic, and professional discourse, alphabetic, visual, and aural works are not luxuries, but essential components of knowing.” Discussions of multimodal literacy or multiliteracies have touted comics’ ability to prepare students for engaging with twenty-first century texts. According to Gabriel Sealy-Morris,“Comics provide a practical and active training for navigating the world of mass media, advertising, and government propaganda, in domains from the digital to the freeway”(46) . Comics scholars Hillary Chute and Marianne DeKoven describe the medium of comics or graphic narrative as“cross-discursive,” meaning that, while the textual and visual elements remain separate, they also work together in a way that “calls a reader's attention visually and spatially to the act, process, and duration of interpretation”(767) . Such texts provide a unique interpretive challenge and opportunity for literature students.  \nPerhaps for these reasons, reading comics in the literature classroom has become common if not canonical, as the publication of the Modern Language Association’s Teaching the Graphic Novel almost a decade ago demonstrates.1 However, much of today’s scholarship has  \nfocused on reading comics, not creating them. Composition studies has taken the next logical  \nstep—as Lester Faigley states,“after years of attempting to teach students to analyze images,” he discovered that “they learn much more quickly when they create images on their own”([qtd. in](qtd. in)[ ](qtd. in)[Schiavone 8](Schiavone 8)) . Composition textbooks reflect this trend and a recent survey suggests that“multimodal assignments have, in many ways, become staples in writing classrooms”(Schiavone 358) . The goals of the composition and literature classroom often overlap (critical thinking, argumentation, revision, etc.) and t","cbCaisLhCTcu2qXN","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaisLhCTcu2qXN","pdf",584833,26,"English","# Introduction\n# Multimodal Literacies and Comics\n# From Reading Comics to Creating Comics\n# Why Comics Creation Matters","[{\"question\":\"Why does the essay connect humanities education to citizenship?\",\"answer\":\"It argues that the humanities cultivate imagination and empathy, which helps combat tribalism and supports ethical civic behavior.\"},{\"question\":\"How does the author justify using comics in literature courses?\",\"answer\":\"The essay cites scholarship on multimodal literacy, emphasizing that comics integrate textual and visual interpretation and can prepare students for engaging with contemporary media.\"},{\"question\":\"What is the central difference between reading comics and creating comics in this approach?\",\"answer\":\"The author stresses that creating comics engages multiple modes simultaneously and teaches students faster than assignments that only require image analysis.\"}]","Comics in the Literature Classroom - How Multimodal Learning Can Create Better Citizens | PDF",1792086321]