The Latin American Comics Archive (LACA): an online platform housing digitized Spanish-language comics as a tool to enhance literacy, research, and teaching through scholar/ student collaboration
Abstract
The Latin American Comics Archive (LACA)1 is an ongoing project combining capabilities for Spanish language and culture teaching, research in the Humanities, and digital technologies as a tool for expanding the access and analysis of Latin American comics for both scholars and students. Thanks to a Digital Humanities Mellon Seed Grant, LACA started out with a small representative sample of Latin American comics that were digitized and encoded in CBML over the 2016-2017 academic year. In the Fall of 2017, a pilot course allowed students and researchers to access and explore these source materials as pedagogical tools for learning and researching about Spanish language and Latin American culture. The use of digital tagging and annotation tools on the archive enabled for the analysis of the visual and verbal language of comics, as well as cultural and linguistic items or themes, and a variety of formal categories. Students and researchers were able to collaborate in the definition of key terms to be annotated and used for the research of topics in the digitized comics, with the object of ultimately creating or collaborating in critical editions of comics for use by others, and the expansion of the archive, which will eventually be open to general scholarly use by students and researchers. Integrated applications could also allow for the production of short critical interventions in comic format.
References
Anzaldúa, G. (2001). Borderlands/La frontera. Excerpted In Bizzell, P., & Herzberg, B. (2001), eds. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s. 1585-1604.
Ault, D. (2003). In the Trenches, Taking the Heat: The Confessions of a Comics Professor. International Journal of Comic Art, 5(2), 241-260.
Bateman, J. A., Veloso, F. O. D., Wildfeuer, J., Cheung, F. H., & Guo, N. S. (2017). An open multilevel classification scheme for the visual layout of comics and graphic novels: Motivation and design. Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, 32(3), 476–510. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/fqw024
Bode, K. (2017). The Equivalence of “Close” and “Distant” Reading; Or, Toward a New Object for Data-Rich Literary History. Modern Language Quarterly, 78(1).
Brandt, D. (2009). Literacy and learning: Reflections on writing, reading, and society. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Brooks, M. (2017). Teaching TEI to undergraduates: A case study in a digital humanities curriculum. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 0(0), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/10691316.2017.1326331
Carter, J. B. (2008). Comics, the canon, and the classroom. In Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (2008). Teaching visual literacy: using comic books, graphic novels, anime, cartoons, and more to develop comprehension and thinking skills. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. 47-60.
Chute, H., & Jagoda, P. (2014). Special Issue: Comics & Media. Critical Inquiry, 40(3), 1–10. JSTOR, JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/677316.
Dubin, F., & Kuhlman, N. (1992). The dimensions of cross-cultural literacy. In Dubin F., & Kuhlman, N. (Eds.). Cross-cultural literacy: Global perspectives on reading and writing. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Regents/Prentice Hall. v-x.
Dunst, A., Hartel, R., Hohenstein, S., & Laubrock, J. (2016). Corpus Analyses of Multimodal Narrative: The Example of Graphic Novels. In Digital Humanities 2016: Conference Abstracts. Krakow, Poland. Retrieved from http://dh2016.adho.org/static/data-copy/387.html
Dupuy, B., Michelson, K. & Petit, E. (2013). Fostering Multiliteracies Through a Global Simulation Approach in Intermediate French: A Curricular Project.” Nclc.org
Earhart, A. E. (2012). Can Information Be Unfettered? Race and the New Digital Humanities Canon. In M. K. Gold (Ed.), Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minnesota: University Of Minnesota Press. Retrieved from http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/13
Eyman, D., & Ball, C.E. (2015). Digital Humanities Scholarship and Electronic Publication, in: Ridolfo, J., & Hart-Davidson, W. (Eds.). Rhetoric and the digital humanities. Chicago; London: University Of Chicago Press. 65-79.
Fernández L’Hoeste, H. D., & Poblete, J. (2009). Redrawing the nation: National identity in Latin/o American comics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (2008). Teaching visual literacy: using comic books, graphic novels, anime, cartoons, and more to develop comprehension and thinking skills. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.
Haidar, A., & Ganascia, J. (2016). Automatic Detection of Characters in Case Insensitive Text in Comics. In Digital Humanities 2016: Conference Abstracts (pp. 425-426). Jagiellonian University & Pedagogical University, Kraków.
Hiebert, E. H. (1991). Introduction. In Hiebert, E. H. (Ed.), Literacy for a diverse society: Perspectives, practices, and policies. New York: Teachers College Press. 1-6.
Howes, F. (2010). Imagining a multiplicity of visual rhetorical traditions: Comics lessons from rhetoric histories. ImageTexT: Interdisciplinary Comics Studies, 5(3), 48.
Jacobs, D. (2013). Graphic Encounters: Comics and the Sponsorship of Multimodal Literacy. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
Kern, R. (2000). Literacy and language teaching. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
King, E., & Page, J. (2017). Posthumanism and the graphic novel in Latin America. London : UCL Press. 84-108.
Kramsch, C. (2006). From Communicative Competence to Symbolic Competence. The Modern Language Journal, 90(2), 249-252. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/3876875
Kuboi, T. (2014). Element Detection in Japanese Comic Book Panels. Master’s Theses and Project Reports. https://doi.org/10.15368/theses.2014.141
Library of Congress. (1977). United States copyright protection for books by foreign authors under the Universal Copyright Convention. Washington, D.C: Copyright Office, Library of Congress.
Manovich, L. (2012). How to Compare One Million Images? In Understanding Digital Humanities (pp. 249-278). Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230371934_14
Manovich, L., Douglass, J., & Huber, W. (2011). Understanding scanlation: how to read one million fan-translated manga pages. Image & Narrative, 12(1), 206-228.
McCloud, S. (1994). The invisible art: Understanding comics. NY: HarperCollins Publishers.
McPherson, T. (2012). Why Are the Digital Humanities So White? or Thinking the Histories of Race and Computation. In M. K. Gold (Ed.), Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minnesota: University Of Minnesota Press. Retrieved from http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/13
Merino, A. (2003). El cómic hispánico. Madrid: Cátedra.
Mignolo, W. (2003). The darker side of the Renaissance: Literacy, territoriality, and colonization. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press.
O’Donnell, D., Bordalejo, B., Ray Murray, P., del Rio, G., & Gonzales Blanco, E. (2016). Boundary Land: Diversity as a defining feature of the Digital Humanities. In Digital Humanities 2016: Conference Abstracts. Krakow, Poland. Retrieved from http://dh2016.adho.org/static/data-copy/387.html
Risam, R. (2015a). Across Two (Imperial) Cultures. In HASTAC 2015. East Lansing, Michigan. Retrieved from http://roopikarisam.com/uncategorized/across-two-imperialcultures-2/
Risam, R. (2015b). Beyond the Margins: Intersectionality and the Digital Humanities, 9(2). Retrieved from http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/2/000208/000208.html
Singer, K. (2013). Digital Close Reading: TEI for Teaching Poetic Vocabularies /. The Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy, (3). Retrieved from https://jitp.commons.gc.cuny.edu/digital-close-reading-tei-for-teaching-poetic-vocabularies/
Spiro, L. (2012). “This Is Why We Fight”: Defining the Values of the Digital Humanities. In M. K. Gold (Ed.), Debates in the Digital Humanities. Minnesota: University Of Minnesota Press. Retrieved from http://dhdebates.gc.cuny.edu/debates/text/13
Tabachnick, S. E. (2009). Teaching the Graphic Novel. New York, N.Y: The Modern Language Association of America.
Tufis, M., & Ganascia, J.-G. (2016, March). Adding semantics to comics using a crowdsourcing approach. Retrieved from https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01288528
Turton, A. (2017). Towards Feminist Data Production: A Case Study From Comics. In Digital Humanities 2017: Conference Abstracts. Montreal, Canada. Retrieved from https://dh2017.adho.org/abstracts/493/493.pdf
Underwood, T. (2017). A Genealogy of Distant Reading, 11(2). Retrieved from http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/11/2/000317/000317.html
United States. (1988). Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works: Message from the President of the United States transmitting the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works of September 9, 1886, completed at Paris on May 4, 1986, revised at Berlin on November 13, 1908, completed at Berne on March 20, 1914, and revised at Rome on June 2, 1928, at Brussels on June 26, 1948, at Stockholm on July 14, 1967, and at Paris on July 24, 1971 and amended in 1979. Washington: U.S. G.P.O.
Versaci, Rocco (2008). “‘Literary Literacy’ and the Role of the Comic Book.” In Frey, N., & Fisher, D. (2008). Teaching visual literacy: using comic books, graphic novels, anime, cartoons, and more to develop comprehension and thinking skills. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. 91-111.
Walsh, J. A. (2012). Comic Book Markup Language: An Introduction and Rationale, 6(1). Retrieved from http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/6/1/000117/000117.html
Whitson, R. T. (2013). “Comics and the Digital Humanities.” Presentation for Comics and the Multimodal World. http://www.rogerwhitson.net/?p=2130
Whitson, R. T., & Salter, A. (2015). Introduction: Comics and the Digital Humanities, 9(4). Retrieved from http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/9/4/000210/000210.html
Los autores/as que publiquen en esta revista ceden los derechos de autor y de publicación a "Cuadernos del Centro de Estudios de Diseño y Comunicación", Aceptando el registro de su trabajo bajo una licencia de atribución de Creative Commons, que permite a terceros utilizar lo publicado siempre que de el crédito pertinente a los autores y a esta revista.
