Lecture about comics and heritage learning hosted by MLC Feb. 16

The University of Maine Department of Modern Languages and Classics (MLC), with support from Adelaide Hamm Campus Activity Fund, will host a talk entitled “Narrating Lives: Creation of Comics by Heritage Learners” with Sandra Bernal Heredia, assistant professor in the Department of Spanish at Colby College, at Hill Auditorium on Feb. 16, 5-6:30 p.m.

Bernal Heredia will discuss how the creation of comics can be especially beneficial for heritage learners as students develop visual and narrative abilities, but can also serve to reflect and transmit trauma, memory and emotions. Many studies have highlighted the prominence and appeal of using comics as second language learning tools, pointing principally to the casual speech and image to text format to engage students with the language on a dynamic level. Comic creation demands planning, idea organization, language succinctness and grammar, among other things; if the comic has a testimonial component, it can also be a visual and written documentation of a forgotten or marginalized experience. 

In this talk, Bernal Heredia will give examples of the comics her students created through the Pixton platform and the activities used in this teaching unit.