Photo by Justin Wigard (not pictured)
On October 29th, 2019, Professor Qiana Whitted spoke with graduate students about developing a space that embraces exploratory narrative around questions of race and identity within comics. We were joined by English graduate students Kiana Gonzalez and Liz Deegan, as well as Daniel Fandino, graduate student in the Department of History.
We were so pleased to have the 2019 MSU Comics Forum Keynote Scholar join us for a wonderful conversation about how to teach comics, particularly those that center or tackle questions of race. Professor Whitted shared insight into her comics pedagogy, discussed her recently published (EDIT: and, as of July 2020, EISNER-WINNING) book on EC Comics, Race, and Protest, and talked about the tricky processes of navigating comics archives. (Where does one start? How does one make these comics archives more accessible?)
Because we are a graduate research workshop group focused on understanding the possibilities of teaching with and through comics, we were fortunate that Professor Whitted shared not only places to start with comics in the classroom, but those that provide accessible entry points for helping undergraduate students grapple with issues of race and identity through comics. Overall, we were so very lucky to have Professor Whitted join us via Zoom, and came away feeling so very inspired.