I think of Paul, in my Freshman Comp classroom. I don’t now remember the assignment but I think it was a pretty standard “bring these three essays together” into some kind of argument (draw some comparisons, how do they speak to each other, that kind of thing). I don’t recall whether he asked for permission to do so, but I do remember encouraging the class to be creative, try something new, to write something interesting and that interested them. Paul handed in a comic book: it was six pages of his draft, each of the three authors represented by a character. He knew what he was doing; knew comic books had his own visual style that was consistent across each panel. I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I encouraged him to keep going, was thrilled with the creativity, the uniqueness.
His next draft was 15 pages or so, elaborately drawn and scanned into his computer, then printed up. What I most remember was having a conversation after class, me bent over his comic book draft, he sitting back watching. I was perplexed, couldn’t name my discomfort with his work until finally it hit me. I said to him, “This is an ok academic essay that looks like a comic book. But it’s not a comic book. It’s missing the stuff I associate with the kind of adult comic book you seem to want to write here….where is the moral ambiguity,…the sudden use of jarring images….” In that moment I realized my problem, and his. And he did too, when he said back to me, “I need to get a good grade. If I wrote you a comic, I wouldn’t get a good grade.” I had pressed him into a corner, and he had written himself into that corner: I had asked him to engage in a complex negotiation of genre and audience and context when I wasn’t even sure how to do it, nor did I feel equipped to guide him, until, really it was too late…ok so that was more about me learning….
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