Project

Comics and Graphic Novels in language classes in secondary education

Code
BOF/MVF/202409/006
Duration
01 January 2025 → 31 December 2025
Funding
Regional and community funding: Special Research Fund
Research disciplines
  • Humanities and the arts
    • Contemporary literature
    • Literary studies not elsewhere classified
    • Theory and methodology of literary studies not elsewhere classified
    • Digital media
    • Mixed media
Keywords
graphic novels medium comics language education multimodality
 
Project description

The Dutch ‘Graphic Novels for the Reading List’ is a selection of ‘literary comics’  with which ‘comics creator of the fatherland’, Margreet de Heer, inspired teachers and pupils of Dutch. The educational benefits of comics in language teaching are both theoretically (Amann & Walner 2022) and practically underscored. Practical examples focus on the creation of comics or emphasise the literary value of graphic novels (Klascement). Still, comics appear in a panoply of formats (zines, webcomics), and reach diverse publics through multiple distribution channels. To help language teachers in secondary schools academically trained in literary and linguistic research, this workshop and webinar approaches comics as a medium, attentive to multimodality, publication format and mirrored audience. Teachers can follow the workshop as an in-person training or as a webinar  on comics.ugent.be, and are offered comics in multiple languages (Dutch, French, German, English, Spanish).