Minimum Requirements:
1000-1100 words
Upload to turnitin.comLinks to an external site.
All outside sources must be pre-approved by the instructor
Follow MLA guidelines and include a Works Cited Page
Comics has been dismissed as an escapist and childish entertainment for years. It is only recently that the form has begun to gain credibility as a legitimate literary medium. This is due, in part, to the effort of comics artists to train readers to acknowledge the demands of visual literacy and to deliver some complex and compelling works in the comics form.
Compose an essay that argues why comics is (or is not) an appropriate medium for our textbook, Understanding Rhetoric. Take a position in the debate about the ability of comics to convey important messages and not to simply entertain. You’ll need to justify this position by explaining how comics works.
For those of you who are readers, you may want to argue that comics cannot match the clarity of text-based materials to deliver both intellectual complexity and descriptive detail. The excerpt from “The Art of Persuasion” chapter of Creating America: Reading and Writing Arguments is a good comparison for the chapters we’ve read in Understanding Rhetoric.
For either position, you’ll need to establish how each medium works to engage the mind, and what their strengths are in the ways these mediums deliver content.
Example thesis question:
Does an English Composition class benefit by using a comics text-book? Why or why not? How is it effective or not?
You may need to do some research to flesh this idea out.
Works Cited for “The Art and Craft of Persuasion” :
Moser, Joyce P. and Watters, Ann. Creating America: Reading and Writing Arguments, 4th ed. Pearson, 2005.