David Low

California State University, Fresno | Fresno State · Department of Literacy, Early, Bilingual, and Special Education

In this chapter, three critical scholars of literature, literacy, multimodality, and identity trace various iterations of Miles Morales in the decade-plus since his debut. No longer confined to serialized comic books, Miles has, as of this writing, appeared in two prose novels; several popular and well-received animated films; video games; standalo...

This column will focus on several standalone titles offered by Marvel/Graphix and DC Kids/YA and their pedagogical potential for exploring transitions with upper elementary and middle grades readers. Because children's lives are inherently in flux, they should have opportunities to read and discuss empowering stories, in a format and featuring char...

The theorization of multimodality in academic scholarship is disconnected from how it is conceptualized by children. To bridge this gap, we analyzed 75 interviews with children about their digital video making. Analysis of their responses demonstrates children's socially-embedded, age-specific understandings of how modes operate, as well as when an...

Through an analysis of published graphic novels and comics created by schoolchildren, and building upon Rudine Sims Bishop's literary metaphors, we discuss how comics serve as compasses and kaleidoscopes that allow readers/composers/educators to center justice in the storying process. We argue that the comics medium provides readers and authors spe...

We use a multi-dimensional identity theory to examine how children’s picturebooks present discourses about what mathematics is and what doing mathematics means. In our critical content analysis of twenty-four picturebooks, we found four recurring hidden messages that frame mathematical ability as preternatural; as having a magic eye; as doing calcu...

A number of literacy theorists have worked to describe what is new and different about youth enactments of literacy in the digital age. In doing so, many invoke “digital dichotomies,” or oppositional framings meant to differentiate among various enactments of literacy (i.e. digital vs. analog, online vs. offline, out-of-school vs. inschool). We arg...

In this article, we examine how children ages 8 to 10 characterized the audiences of digital videos they made in school. Children's perceptions of their viewers reflected, and in many cases complicated, current theorizing about the vast potential audiences of digital texts. Our analysis of videos and interview data surfaces several findings pertain...

This article documents the design and implementation of a culturally responsive critical media literacies curriculum centered around media representations of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL). Students (grades 6-8) were invited to discuss media imagery relating to DAPL and to create memes reflecting their understandings. To situate this work, we ar...

In this article, we examine how children ages 8 to 10 characterized the audiences of digital videos they made in school. Children’s perceptions of their viewers reflected, and in many cases complicated, current theorizing about the vast potential audiences of digital texts. Our analysis of videos and interview data surfaces several findings pertain...

Given the growing interest and representation of superheroes in comics and other media, we are interested in the ways young people read superhero texts and how those readings influence their conceptualisations of gender within and outside educational spaces. In this article we explore students’ responses to (re)presentations of gender in superhero...

After their middle school developed a curriculum on critical inquiry and superheroes, six students met with teacher-researchers for a year to continue the conversation that started in language arts class. In this article, we explore how middle school students purposefully used superhero texts to engage in critical inquiries related to gender and se...

In this article we highlight analyses conducted in two qualitative literacy studies to discuss various implications of a blended, or hybrid, approach to multimodal analysis. By investigating several prominent frameworks commonly used together for the purpose of analyzing multimodal data, and describing our own experiences blending these frameworks,...

In this column, we propose six literature circle roles for students to discuss comics and graphic novels (graphica) in ELA classrooms.

This article explores the potential of using multimodal texts—particularly comics—as a way of engaging teacher education students in critical inquiry around literacy and ELA assessments. We describe a qualitative study into the use of a multimodal comics-form article within an ELA/literacy assessment course in an MEd program. Our findings suggest t...

This chapter examines representations of an urban charter school lottery in Marvel's Ultimate Comics Spider-Man, a comic book series that is popular with young readers, regularly selling 35,000 to 50,000 single issues in a month, and considerably more once anthologized in hard and softcover editions. The critically acclaimed title, which began in S...

In an era of “colorblind racism,” in which race and racism are often suppressed as topics of discussion in classrooms, this article explores how students used comics to invent workarounds for “colormuteness” in their school. Knowing comics are not generally taken seriously, students employed the medium to subversive ends.

In an era of “colorblind racism,” in which race and racism are often suppressed as topics of discussion in classrooms, this article explores how students used comics to invent workarounds for “colormuteness” in their school. Knowing comics are not generally taken seriously, students employed the medium to subversive ends.

This article presents a 2-year case study of Héctor, a member of a school-based Comics Inquiry Community. Through a close, chronological examination of Héctor’s multimodal reading and composing practices as a sixth- and seventh-grade student, the article shows Héctor using comics as a medium to think beyond the places, spaces, and identities assign...

This article, part of a four-year research partnership with a multilingual faith community and its school, explores what happened when we invited young children in an aftercare program to inquire into the university from their perspectives. Through a sociocultural literacy framework and realist theories of identity and experience, we examine the ch...

Literacy scholars have argued that curricular remediation marginalizes the dynamic meaning-making practices of urban youth and ignores contemporary definitions of literacy as multimodal, socially situated, and tied to people's identities as members of cultural communities. For this reason, it is imperative that school-based literacy research unsett...

This article explores how texts not traditionally considered academic (such as comics) and texts often read in schools (such as canonical novels) have porous boundaries and are often informed by the same literary legacies. Drawing on a qualitative practitioner research study, we illustrate how African American naturalism, á la Richard Wright, finds...

This article explores how immigrant students in the United States utilise multimodal literacy practices to complicate dominant narratives of American national identity – narratives of facile assimilation, meritocracy and linear trajectories. Such ideologies can be explicitly evident in curricular materials or can be woven more implicitly into schoo...

In recent years, reading scholars have increasingly attended to children’s responses to picturebook page breaks, reasoning that the inferences young readers make during the turning of the page are central to understanding how children construct continuous narratives in semiotically rich texts. In this paper I argue that comics (including comic book...

A personal reflection from a student of Dr. Sipe showcases the power and humanity of his conversational prowess. In this reflection, a developing discussion with Dr. Sipe around Cynthia Rylant’s Missing May (1992) is connected to Roland Barthes’s concept of jouissance.

This response to Marni Binder reflects upon two examples of (im)migrant children's artwork and challenges the dominant notion that (im)migration experiences — and their subsequent portrayals — can be fit into neat slots. The authors position multimodal composing opportunities as affording children a vital instrument for deploying their full semioti...