Reading When the World Is on Fire

Abstract

This study explores teaching and learning with a range of texts — with a focus on comics — that highlight diverse identities and voices. I asked: What happens when a range of multimodal and nontraditional texts with prominent diverse identity representations are integrated into a 10th grade ELA curriculum? Data was collected in a culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse school with a 10th grade ELA teacher and six students as participants. The comics medium, combined with other media in multimodal text sets, provided opportunities to challenge normative curricula and for students to think about themselves and how they operate in their worlds.

Keywords

• comics
• graphic novels
• multimodal text sets
• critical literacy
• multimodal lit
• multimodal literacy