As a nerd, I always admired comic books, but I never actually read them. I spent time on Wikipedia reading about them, but I rarely ever held them in my hands, let alone thought to ever make one. So when I saw that there would be an EPIC workshop on Graphic Ethnography for this year’s Learning and Networking Week, I knew I needed to sign up and learn more about what all of that would entail.
For Caroline Schuster and Chitra Venkatarami, the facilitators of our session, this workshop would entail exploring comics as a medium for communicating research, as well as understanding of the creation of sequential art can be a powerful tool and medium for ethnographers. I will admit, I was wondering how much I would have to draw, because that’s what I instinctively think of when I think of comics. But as Chitra said very early in the process, “You just have to have some type of visual language to reference, and you’re good.”
I learned a brief history of how drawing and graphic arts have been intertwined with ethnography, and how they’ve influenced each other. I learned different approaches to doing graphic ethnography, some of which doesn’t involve any necessary advanced skill in drawing, especially if you’re collaborating with others, which I found to be the core of the workshop.
When we were put in groups to start to come up with both 3-panel comics and one-page comics, all of the creativity came out from everyone in the group. People drew comics about the process of making cocktails, of going to Buddhist temples, of learning to ride a bike. And we explored the two key concepts important to doing this work in all of them: closure and playing with time. Those two terms were highlighted as the key to creating sequential art, regardless of the scale you’re working with.
There are so many ways to visually tell stories, and this is scratching the surface of what we can do. I’m really grateful that I had the opportunity to go to this workshop, and maybe someday I’ll release my graphic novel of learning to swim from the visual perspective of the birds making fun of me.
EPIC Learning & Networking Week is our annual festival of virtual learning, career development, and networking events for EPIC Members. Join EPIC to watch full videos of 2024 sessions in the EPIC Library, including the entire graphic ethnography workshop!
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