The Avengers Come to Life This session will be a comic book story brought to life. The performers will enact a script about how to teach composition using new approaches that involves bringing graphic novels into the classroom. The story will discuss different ways to use comic books to engage young college writers in examining the world around them while enhancing their composing skills. And, to make sure our discussion is theoretically grounded, a narrator, The Watcher, will read the Avengers’ research-based thought bubbles for the audience!
Our Cast of Superheroes This session will feature appearances by Captain America, the Black Panther, the Scarlet Witch, the Black Widow, Iron Man, Captain Marvel, Spider-Man, The Wasp, The Vision, and Peggy Carter, all suited up for battle in full superhero costumes. Yes, you heard us right, we will be wearing our superhero costumes for this live comic book performance.
The Super Villain Every superhero adventure involves battling a powerful super villain, and our story is no different. For this performance, the Avengers will battle one of the universe’s most powerful supervillains, Thanos. This evil villain has used his powers to make students question the value of writing. He has made students call composition class confusing, difficult, useless, outdated, irrelevant, and, gasp, boring. Our heroes will have to fight back to overcome Thanos in order to help students come to understand the true value of learning how to write effectively.
The Adventure In a series of four acts, the Avengers will learn how to teach writing and develop a pedagogy capable of beating Thanos.
About the presentersGian Stefan Pagnucci
Dr. Pagnucci teaches writing and Comics Studies courses.
Darius M. Cureton
Professional African American Male who is a productive, organized and even-keeled scholar.
Nicol Michelle Epple
Nicol Michelle Epple teaches at St. Francis University, and she is a doctoral candidate in English Literature and Criticism. Her scholarship interests are the intersections of spirituality and sexuality. She has co-edited Sexuality, Oppression, and Human Rights (2015) and Exploring Spirituality and Sexuality (pending Brill Publishing) which contains her chapter, “Celebrating Spiritual Bliss: Holistic Sexual Encounters between Christian Believer and God.”
Sandra Eckard
Sandy is a Professor of English and the Writing Studio Director at East Stroudsburg University where she teaches writing and literature courses, works with English Education students, and coordinates the Writing Studio, the writing tutoring center on campus. She writes about comic book pedagogy, writing theory, YA literacy, and pop culture in the classroom.
Sheila Farr
I am an Assistant Professor of English at Thiel College, a small, liberal arts college in Western Pennsylvania, where I teach a variety of courses in the English Department and Honors Institute. My teaching areas include women’s literature, literary adaptation, the novel, digital rhetoric, composition, and research. My research areas include 19th-Century British literature, especially novels by women; fairy tales; adaptation theory; and feminist theory.
Carleigh Brower
Carleigh Brower is the Director of Academic Writing at Manhattanville College. She oversees the Academic Writing Program, Writing Center, and Academic Resource Center, and teaches first-year and upper-level writing studies courses. She has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is a doctoral student in the Composition and Applied Linguistics Program at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her research areas include supporting academic, digital, and critical literacies and fostering peer tutor research in writing center studies.
Nick Katsiadas
Nick Katsiadas is a lecturer in the English Department at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on graphic narratives, European Romanticism and its echoes in later experimental narratology. He is the author of “Mytho-Auto-Bio: Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, the Romantics, and Shakespeare’s The Tempest,” “The Unwritten: Romanticism in Comics?” and a forthcoming book that is being published by the Rochester Institute of Technology Press, titled Romanticism in Comics: Faith, Myth, and Mood.
Yi Izzy Yu
Yi Izzy Yu is a lecturer at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and creative director for Pangea Organic Foods in China. Her scholarship focuses on applying ideas from Taoist and Buddhist philosophy to education. Before she moved to the United States, she worked as translator for Microsoft in Shanghai, China and was a professor at several Chinese Universities. She teaches classes in international literature, mythology, and composition.
Brian P Burke
Assistant Professor at University Of Pittsburgh.
Specializes in Film Studies, Superhero Mythology, TESOL, Composition, Creative Writing, and Shakespeare.
Steve Pearlman
Steven J. Pearlman, Ph.D., is the Director of Interdisciplinary Writing and Reasoning and the University of Saint Joseph in Hartford, Connecticut. He’s also one of the founders of The Critical Thinking Initiative and one of the hosts of The Critical Thinking Initiative podcast.