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Have you used comics to teach literature? How have you used them? I'd love to hear about how you teach with comics or other non-traditional genres in the comment section below. I think that comics can be an invaluable teaching tool, but aside from the occasional non-serial graphic novel, they are underused. For every Maus, Fun Home, and American Born Chinese, countless superhero and villain comics are disregarded as too superficial for the level of analysis afforded “real” works of literature. Yet, I find that the comic as a visual form appeals to my AP literature students and provides them with amazing opportunities to synthesize middle age, golden age and baroque literature with contemporary modes of representation like the bitmoji, avatar and cartoon styles, tweet sized narratives, rich dialogue and essential descriptive statements and transitions.
Consider El Burlador de Seviila, a long play from 17th century Spain and a staple of the AP Spanish Literature reading list. After just looking over the long list of characters and skimming the multiple acts of the play, students find the play dated, boring, and unrelated to who they are or what they like. Students wrestle with a play that opens in a palace ballroom with "old" poetic style language. Unfamiliar with symbolism-laden myth of Don Juan, and without knowing how this myth functions even today, most students manage only a surface-level comprehension of the text, missing the opportunity to explore the larger ideas about how gender is constructed in the play and how the play is representative of its cultural era.
Research from literacy expert Catherine Snow shows that student motivation is essential for reading comprehension. Motivating students with texts that resonate with their personal interests and identities will increase their investment, leading to greater exposure to words, greater vocabulary acquisition, and more frequent use of reading strategies — three cornerstones of comprehension.
So to build my students’ comprehension and sharpen their analytical skills, I developed an comic book project where they explore the myth of Don Juan through a modern more of representation, the comic book. Students synthesize key characters and scenes into the comic book form. I wanted the template to be ready to assign on Google Classroom and I included tutorials, guidance and ideas on how to create characters and make a digital comic using my template. I developed this to use as a review and assessment of the text El Burlador de Sevilla de Tirso de Molina with my own AP Spanish Literature students and will ask them to synthesize the story, completing key scenes as they relate to each of the women "burladas" by Don Juan.
As practice in class, I will give the entire class editing access and assign groups key quotes and ask each group to develop images around their key quotes. I might ask them to each use the image of Don Juan provided to give a sense of continuity to the storyline. Once the groups are done I hope to have a modernized comic version of El Burlador de Sevilla and a collaborative class re-telling of the classic play. Have you used comics to teach literature? How have you used them? I'd love to hear about how you teach with comics or other non-traditional genres in the comment section below.
If you like this, you can get a copy of the El Burlador de Sevilla Comic Book Template on my TPT site. Check out my TPT store and follow me here.
Check out my other content:
AP Spanish Literature Burlador de Sevilla Google Distance Construction of Gender
Segunda Carta Relación Distance Learning Google Slides Easy Text & Activities
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