Historical Uses Of Graphic Novel, Comic Books, And Comic Strips

Historical Uses of Graphic Novel, Comic Books, and Comic Strips,

Picture books. Everyone has read one as a child, and that is exactly what they are: books for children. Or are they? Picture books, comic book, and graphic novel tend to be grouped together and all tend to be stereotyped as books for children, but recently the idea of using graphic novels as a source of education for teens in high school and even for adults in college has popped up. The book Maus II by Art Spiegelman is a graphic novel in which the reader follows Art’s father Vladek through Nazi Camps. The fact that Art used a graphic novel format was ground breaking and the idea that it was a historical reference made it even more unique. There are some comics that do show the

This article is much like Maus II, but with one big different: one is a graphic novel, one is a traditional novel. In “Individuals and Mass Behavior in Extreme Situations,” Bettelheim tells the reader about the psychological effects on the Nazis camp prisoner and his own metal change in the camps. The article is very informative, but that is about how far it goes. There is almost no emotion though out the article. It is rather bland and, maybe, the audience could take more away if he added graphic novel aspects into his essay. J. Spencer Clark, a professor at Utah State University, did a study on this by taking college students studying to be teacher and having them read graphic novels and report their experience and learning from reading them. Clack found that, “The pre-service teachers’ evaluations demonstrated that graphic novels… would be valuable for the history classroom at the secondary and college levels because they present historical agency in multiple ways that disrupt tradition historical narratives.” So, he is saying that graphic novels give more voice to the actual struggle of the current times; for example, that America did not just go into WWII, that America was actually avoiding it and the steps that lead up to them joining. Making “Individuals and Mass Behavior

Well, Maus II was a combination of both. It showed a part of history in a way that has never been done before and it changes persons’ views of the camps themselves. The way the Spiegelman drew his father’s account and his own experience of being with his father was a completely different way of telling history. As for the emotions, J. Spencer Clark, a professor at Utah State University, stated this about reading graphic novels vs. just learning about historical events, “[I]t is easy for people to view historical events as inevitable...This type of explanation or view can distort or dissolve the understanding of human agency in historical events. The [college students] were able to recognize historical agency instead of understanding some historical events as inevitable” (Clark 2013). Clark is saying that because of the visual effects of graphic novels, students were able to see the actual processes the events that lead up to certain events, not just that a big event would have happened no mater what. This can be applied to Maus II because it put the reader in the point of view of Art’s dad in the concentration camp and, even though the reader knew Vladek would get out alive, they still felt all of the emotions that Vladek felt. This change of emotion towards the camps is due to the book being a graphic novel. Watts, a