quick update

A lengthy stint of jury duty has delayed some updates here - but a few things. First up, check out this interview on graphic novel reporter with the super cool Maureen Bakis - teacher and author of the Graphic Novel Classroom, who visited my class back in the fall. Maureen was a great guest and inspirational to the teachers in my class. In her interview, she discusses strategies from her book and her own class, and gives a nod to her visit to Columbia. Check it out.

A few new things in the works, which i'll share soon. For now, created some images for the Association for the Study of Higher Education (ASHE) in conjunction with their upcoming national conference. Here's a sample:

Hastac Talk

Happy New Year!

Fall of 2012 saw few updates to this site - but not because i wasn't making new comics. Rather the opposite, I was immersed in two big projects that i'll post more on soon, as well as lots of thinking on comics through the course I developed and taught this fall at Teachers College, Columbia U (check out the wikisite for articles and resources galore here: www.comicsclassroom.wikispaces.org).

I also attended a few conferences this fall to present on my comics dissertation. In these talks, I advocated for the inclusion of comics as legitimate discourse within and without the academy. A lot of fun and great responses. You can check out a pictorial version of my talk at HASTAC in December here: http://comicsclassroom.wikispaces.com/file/view/Sousanis+Hastac+VisualTalk.pdf.
HASTAC is a great group rethinking education and definitely worth checking out.

More to come - Nick

In Print: "New Maps" - Interdisciplinary Studies

As with the recent "The Importance of Seeing Double," "New Maps" was created for the Association of Integrative Studies' newsletter for their October edition. They should be seen as companion pieces, and likely I'll find a way to integrate(!) them into a single piece as part of my dissertation.  Wanna know more about the study of interdisciplinary studies? Check out the AIS website here. Good group. - Nick 

In print: The Importance of Seeing Double

This piece was created for the Association of Integrative Studies' newsletter Integrative Pathways March 2011 edition. It's also being reprinted in a textbook on integrative studies due out soon. I've got a related piece in the forthcoming edition of AIS's newsletter this fall. I'll post it after it appears in print. Interested in interdisciplinary studies? Check out the AIS website here. Good group. - Nick 

On View: Seeing Red Feeling Blue

Thanks to an invite from Gan Golan (co-creator of Good Night Bush), my piece about the ridiculousness of red states and blue states made during the run-up to the 2008 presidential election is now on view as part of the Po Boy Art Gallery's "The Comic Show/People's Art of Portland" in Portland, Oregon. (Info here: http://poboyart.com/). I haven't made it out, but if you're in the area before May 14, 2011 - check it out, sounds like a good show.

Creating "Seeing Red/Feeling Blue" was the impetus to launching this site and I'm pleased to have it out in the world again. - Nick

Hold Close (Tsunami Essay)

In the midst of the initial batch of headlines coming out of Japan, I found myself viscerally compelled to respond in some way. Perhaps on the second or third night after the tsunami hit, I had jotted down some notes about an initial idea for this piece, before going to sleep. I couldn't sleep, and got up to put sketches down - that ultimately are pretty much what I ended up doing in the final piece. The piece kept changing throughout the process before returning back to nearly what I'd come up with that first night. There are no neat answers in this situation and as further horrors stack up, I find myself coming back to that last line over and over again "hold close..." - Nick

In Print!: Mind the Gaps

Another piece sees print this month, this time "Mind the Gaps" (which I first posted here) specifically created for my advisor Ruth Vinz's (and co-author David Schaafsma's) text Narrative Inquiry: Approach to Language and Literacy Research. My piece serves as the final chapter, initially a sort of "fable for the future" (as Ruth terms it) as to where narrative inquiry might be headed. I wrote this bit of text to introduce it, some of which made it's way into the lovely introduction Ruth provides to my chapter:

In extending me this opportunity to contribute this coda of sorts, Ruth and Dave are demonstrating a firm commitment to the path staked out in the text, and an openness to new ways of seeing and re-presenting, an embracing of multiplicity of perspectives that is the future of narrative work.

Narratives are messy, composed of nested, overlapping elements, running in a multitude of directions. While time may or may not unfold linearly, bringing together multiple vantage points results in a dizzying web of complex connections. Comics are a language of juxtapositions, particularly well-suited to convey the richness and depth of non-linear, multi-layered narratives. By holding multiple threads and multiple trains of thought together, comics act as a sort of third-space – a place to let multiple stories and metaphors come together and interact in complex ways, while remaining navigable and readable.

But more than a powerful tool for juxtapositions, comics are a place where the visual and the verbal exist side by side. In comics, the visual is equal partner to the verbal, not illustrative of the ‘real’ thing or mere decoration, but integral to our thinking and our making of meaning. The resonance between visual and verbal modes creates for a higher order space, something beyond either alone.

For this piece I sought to offer a “fable for the future” that emphasized this visual aspect in telling the story from a different angle. As I set forth to unravel what narrative inquiry meant and how best to present it to the reader/viewer, I was struck by the similarities between the process of doing narrative work as Ruth and Dave laid it out and life drawing. Unlike flat, snapshot models of research as “drive-by,” narrative and life drawing convey the dynamic relationships between living beings in their uncertainties and their complexity. And from this starting point, and a lot of play in between, the following piece emerged… 

Anyhow, there you have it (in more words than the piece itself!). - Nick