Feelings Faces, an Elementary Social-Emotional Arts Activity. The idea of this activity was to use the facial expression of cartooning to help build students' empathy, and to create tangible images for their intangible feelings.
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Cathy + e discuss the history of fatphobia and how fat-negative bias was developed in North America. They talk about repercussions in the media + how it still affects us today, including how children develop their sense of self + others.
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6-Panel Stories, a Collaborative Comic Art Activity. At a local middle school, I had the pleasure of teaching a 5-week after school comics club. In this activity, students each have the opportunity to contribute to a 6-panel comic story.
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DaD Presents, Episode 2: Zine Curator + Archivist Malana Krongelb. Malana Krongelb is the librarian at the Sarah Doyle Women’s Center and the founder and curator of Brown University’s first zine collection. Started in 2016, the collection focuses on sharing and preserving zines by marginalized creators and consists of titles from 1974-2018.
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In the longest episode yet, Cathy + e present research on how racism affected the development of the visual language of cartooning. Spanning the 1700s to today, this episode explores the history of art education, caricature and how-to-draw books, and maps the history of minstrelsy in America, creating connections that informed early cartooning. In-depth research offers multiple samples of primary sources, including the art of “physiognomy,” the pseudoscience of judging character from facial features.
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The Prince and the Dressmaker is about fashion, self-expression, and the creative spirit. Sebastian and Frances have dreams, but there are so many roadblocks in their way!
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In this episode, Cathy + e look at the history of queer comics in the American underground and build a biography for the cartoonist + illustrator Jeffrey Catherine Jones. Queer erasure is examined while a history is looked at, researched, and built.
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In this episode, Cathy + e examine the art historical idea of “the canon.” They discuss definitions of the word, the history of the practice, canonization’s criticisms, and how comics are understood within the framework.
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Cathy + e take a look at censorship, banned books, and why some things are deemed appropriate for kids and some things aren’t. e looks at the history of obscenity and how societal censorship suppresses marginalized voices. Cathy examines children’s learning development in reading and art, how graphic novels get categorized, and why.
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Figure drawing is a well-known art exercise for students of all ages, and can be approached in many different ways. The excitement and joy of cartooning is not the precision of drawing, but the communication through marks and forms. Therefore, my approach to figure drawing with my students is not about capturing the perfect form, but instead capturing the emotion that the figure is conveying.
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Historically, mass-produced media is monickered as “low culture,” while fine art is “high.” Where does this dichotomy come from, how are comics treated in this binary, and how can educators take advantage of it? In this episode we dissect the history of accessible media and how comics in the classroom can benefit. Live from Comic Arts Los Angeles!
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DaD Presents, Episode 1: Educator Walker Mettling. Walker Mettling is the co-founder of the Providence Comics Consortium, which is a series of comics classes taught in Providence Community Libraries. They have produced over 25 books of kids' and adults' comics over the past 7 years.
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The Comic Warriors were 12 mighty young people, ages 5 - 13. Here you will find their class anthology, collecting all 12 stories, drawn + printed in August 7 - 11, 2017.
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Cathy + e examine the aesthetics of violence, its depictions in comics, + look at research on how media violence affects its viewers. e examines the ways comics are uniquely suited to depict traumatic memories + violent acts; Cathy talks about the ways the art classroom can address school violence.
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Jumping off of the last episode, Cathy + e complicate their discussion about ‘the gaze.’ They revisit Laura Mulvey’s original ‘male gaze’ definition + its criticisms. Lesbian, black, female, transgender, imperial + medical gaze theories are discussed, which broaden the conversation + offer resistance.
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In this episode, Cathy + e talk about the critical theory 'the gaze.' They recount the gaze's history, its applications in comics culture, and how the theory can be used in art education to teach students how to critically engage with their role as a viewer.
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Love and the supernatural intermingle in this exciting graphic novel. Taproot is a beautiful comic, swirling warm colors and lush environment contributing to the mystery and romance.
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Infamously known as the author of the 1954 book Seduction of the Innocent + blamed for the demise of the Golden Age of comics, German psychiatrist Fredric Wertham is more than a censorship scapegoat. Cathy + e discuss his career as a medical psychiatrist, advocate for African American mental healthcare, + talk about the biases + legitimacies behind this controversial figure.
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When teaching in an art classroom with younger kids, maintaining a positive and inclusive environment can be tricky. Children can spend a large portion of their time growing up in mainstream settings...
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Using the graphic novel My Lesbian Experience with Loneliness as a jumping off point, Cathy + e talk about recent memoir comics + build a context through political performance art + social justice in art education. (This episode discusses human sexuality + uses some mature language.)
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