English

Assignment Details

Proposal Meeting (4-6 November 2025)

The proposal meeting will prepare you for writing your Comic Assignment for this course. The aim of this assignment is to begin researching your topic and come up with a clear, specific argument to build on, or alternatively to come up with a plan for creating your original comic. You are expected to use and apply feedback you receive on this assignment when writing your essay or comic.

Option 1: Analyzing Comics Essay

Choose one of the topics below as a starting point for your thesis statement. Do not feel the need to answer the given question directly or in full, but rather come up with a specific, nuanced thesis statement based on your chosen topic. Your argument should be narrow in focus and clearly defined. Your ideas should be original: they must be different than and/or significantly build on discussions we have had in class. You should also find a scholarly source that pertains to your argument and think about how you will use this source in your own essay (we will discuss finding appropriate secondary sources in class).

For your proposal meeting, please bring:

• Your thesis statement (written out in full);

• Your secondary source (could be the article/book chapter in print or online). Be prepared to discuss how you will use your secondary source in your essay.

Topics:

*Because you are proposing an argument for the essay assignment, the topics below are the same that will be given for the essay. However, you are welcome to change your mind after writing your proposal and use a different topic and thesis statement for your final essay. (In this case, you should still aim to apply feedback you received on your proposal.)

1. Look closely at the panel transitions in one of the comics we have read in this course. What do these types of transitions tell us about narrative time and how the story is told?

2. Discuss the depiction of women in one comic from this course. How do images and words work together to represent female characters, and what does this representation imply? *Alternatively, you make compare the representation of women in two comics.

3. What is the role of fantasy in Jimmy Corrigan? Think about both the role Jimmy’s fantasizing plays in the narrative and how these fantasies are visually depicted.

4. Compare Persepolis to its film adaptation. How does the graphic memoir change by being transformed into animation? (Make sure you come up with a cohesive argument, and not only a list of differences.)

5. Compare the role of family and lineage in two texts from this course. What is the protagonist’s relationship to family in each comic?

6. Promethea makes extensive use of literary allusions. Compare how these references to other texts/events/historical personas function in Promethea and one other comic.

7. Come up with your own topic. If you choose this option, you must discuss your topic with me beforehand and have it approved no later than October 29th

Option 2: Original Comic
Propose your own original comic of 4-7 pages. The comic must be accompanied by a 500-word process statement, which will include a reference to a scholarly source (we will discuss how to find and use secondary sources for your process statement in class).
For your proposal meeting, please bring:

• Your outline of your comic, which should include a plan of how you will use key comics strategies (drawing style, transitions, formatting, text to image relationship, etc.).

• Your secondary source (could be the article/book chapter in print or online). Be prepared to discuss how you will use your secondary source in your process statement.

Comic Assignment (28 November 2025)

Option 1: Analyzing Comics Essay
Submit a formal essay (1600 words in length) based on one of the topics below. 200 words over or under the required length is an acceptable leeway (so between 1400-1800 words); essays outside this range are too long or too short. Your Works Cited page does not count toward the
word count.

From your chosen topic, you’ll need to come up with a specific argument, which will become your thesis statement. Your argument should be narrow in focus and clearly defined. Your ideas should be original: they must be different than and/or significantly build on discussions we have
had in class.

Each essay will be graded on the strength of its thesis statement, the relevance of textual evidence, the clarity of the writing, the organization and flow of paragraphs, and the proper use of MLA style. You are expected to use and apply feedback received during your proposal meeting.

Your essay should use at least one secondary scholarly source, along with the text(s) you are writing on.

Option 2: Original Comic
Write your own original comic of 4-7 pages on any topic you wish.

Your comic must be accompanied by a 500-word process statement, which must include the use of at least one scholarly source (we will discuss how to find and use secondary sources for your process statement in class). Your process statement should be written formally (think mini-essay), and it should discuss which comics strategies you have used in your writing and how they are effective in your piece. The process statement does not count toward the comic page length.

Original comics will be graded on the use of key comics strategies, story arc, language, the process statement, and the proper use of MLA style. Comics will not be graded on the quality of your drawings, whether you create them by hand or digitally. Do your best to make the drawings clear, but for this course I am much more interested in the intent of your drawings rather than technical skill. Please do not use generative AI to produce your images.

Conducting Academic Research With LibrarySearch 

LibrarySearch is MRU Library's one-stop search interface/catalogue that brings together resources across format, time, and subject. 

We have millions of e-resources and 221,000 physical resources in our collection, and LibrarySearch searches across those.

Things to remember when using LibrarySearch:

1. Sign in to save searches, items, and to request materials.

2. Use the pin icon to save books and articles to your Favorites for future reference.

3. Use the filters on the right. You will use Availability, Resource Type, and Date filters most often. Filter settings can be "locked in" so that you don't have to reapply them to every search that you make.

4. Some items may not be available, however, you can request unavailable items using what is called interlibrary loan.

5. When viewing an item record, scroll down to the Get it (for hardcopy/physical items) or Access options (for electronic items) section to get access to the item.

Helpful Search Operators to Use in LibrarySearch

You can use what are called search operators to search in a way to combine or omit different terms by telling the search engine exactly what you want and this can help you save some time (and frustration!)

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "graphic novels"

  •  "Indigenous comics"

  • "comics as literature"

• Use AND to combine search terms (LibrarySearch automatically creates an AND when you write terms one after another, but it can be good practice to use an AND to help you understand the searches that you build) (AND narrows your search):

  • "graphic novels" AND narratology

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms (OR broadens your search):

  • "graphic novels" OR "comic books"

  • criticism OR analysis OR commentary

• Use wild cards/truncation to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol:

  • dream* (in this example, the search dream* will search for records that contain strings such as dreams, dreaming, dreamer, and dreamlike)

Conducting Academic Research With Google Scholar

Google Scholar

Google Scholar is another great way to find high quality resources.

Besides providing links to resources in MRU databases, Google Scholar links to online repositories that contain articles the author has been allowed to upload.  Academia.edu and ResearchGate are among the repositories searched by Google Scholar.

By clicking on the Settings icon, you can select library links to show library access for up to 5 libraries (type in Mount Royal and click on save).  If you are logged into MRU library, links should automatically populate if you are running a Google search in another window. 

Google Scholar has a nifty citation chaining function. The Cited by function will forward you to indexed scholarly material that has cited a resource that you may be interested in. The Related articles link will direct you to similar articles that may have the same metadata or keywords. 

Helpful Search Operators to Use in Google Scholar

Google Scholar's Advanced Search is found by clicking the menu icon in the top left.

You can also add search operators to Google Scholar searches to build your own custom advanced searches in similar ways to LibrarySearch:

• Use quotation marks to keep specific phrases together:

  • "Jimmy Corrigan"

• Avoid using AND to combine search terms with Google Scholar, as the search engine automatically creates ANDs between concepts and sometimes adding an additional AND can confuse the search syntax.

• Use OR to connect two or more similar terms:

  • "graphic novels" OR "comic books" OR comics

• Avoid using wild cards to substitute a letter or suffix with a symbol—instead write out the complete words and connect with an OR

  • allusive OR allusiveness OR allusion OR allusions

Please visit the full Comics & Graphic Novels guide to find recommended databases, journals, and websites.

Figure 1

Peter Steiner's Famous 1993 New Yorker Cartoon Illustrating an Issue Central to Information Evaluation

Note. From "On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog" [Cartoon], by P. Steiner, 1993, Wikimedia (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/f8/Internet_dog.jpg).

Evaluating Information

It is good to find lots of search results, but, in order to use information skilfully, you need to know how to evaluate that information to determine whether a specific resource is appropriate to use in a specific use case (i.e. for a specific assignment).

The phrase "evaluating information" actually stands in for a wide range of judgments that we make about information in many different contexts, whether those judgments are about relevance, timeliness, quality, etc.

Librarians have developed several different acronyms to help people remember useful criteria to use in information evaluation. One of my personal favourites is RADAR!

RADAR stands for

Relevance

Authority

Date

Accuracy

Reason for Creation

We can ask the following questions to help us assess each criterion:

Relevance:

• Does this source fit my topic?

• What is this source's intended audience?

  • Is that intended audience appropriate for my use case in this assignment?

Authority:

• Is/are the creator(s) of this source clearly identified or known to us?

• How important is it in this use case to trust the source's creator(s)?

  • If it is important, why should we trust the source's creator(s)?

  • Is the source's creator credentialed or an expert in their field?

Date:

• Is the creation or publication date of this source identified or known to us?

• Is this source too old?

Accuracy:

• Do this source's facts "check out"?

• Does the source have references of its own?

Reason for Creation (take your best guess at this question using judgments from earlier criteria):

• Why was this source made?

• Was this source made to sell a product or service, to inform/educate, to entertain, etc?

(Adapted from Mandalios, J. (2013). RADAR: An approach for helping students evaluate Internet sources. Journal of Information Science, 39(4), 470-478. https://doi.org/10.1177/0165551513478889)

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

Primary Sources

The literary work itself, such as a novel, poem, story, play, essay, or a collection of these works.

Secondary Sources

Research and scholarship about the primary source work, or about the author/creator of the primary source.

Articles and Books - your best option

• original research appears in peer reviewed journal articles, books, or individual book chapters

• in-depth analysis, criticism, and commentary

• may explore a literary work or set of works, or an author's works as a whole, or a particular literary theme

Reference Works

• sometimes called background sources, includes encyclopedias, handbooks, or companion guides

• only basic or introductory information on a topic or person

• may describe and criticize a work, author, theme, etc., but is not comprehensive literary research or criticism

Book Reviews

• generally written within two years of the time the book was published

• published in journals, trade and popular magazines

• may describe and criticize a work, author, theme, etc., but is not comprehensive literary research or criticism

Scholarly vs. Popular Sources

A scholarly publication contains articles written by experts in a particular field. The primary audience of these articles is other experts.

Many of these publications are also referred to as "peer-reviewed," academic, or "refereed." They all mean essentially the same thing and refer to the editorial and publication process in which scholars in the same field review the research and findings before the article is published.

Some Helpful Questions for Identifying a Scholarly/Academic Article

1. What are the author’s credentials? Was it written by an expert?

2. Was it published in a journal (is there a DOI?)? (If you are not sure if a source is a journal article, you can enter the title of the publication into Ulrichs Web to check.)

3. Does it use academic or more technical language?

4. Does it includes a reference list of sources that it is citing?

5. How long is it? (Scholarly articles are typically longer than popular or news articles.)

6. Does it have a "Received" and "Accepted" date on it?

7. Is it an actual article? (Sometimes other types of content are included in scholarly publications, such as editorials/opinion pieces and book reviews. Make sure you are looking at an article.)

Also, specifically for this assignment: make sure that the article (or book or book chapter) that you find is a work of literary criticism/analysis.

Watch out for articles about certain graphic novels/comics that are written from the perspective of other disciplines. For example, here's an article on Persepolis in the Journal of Multicultural Discourses. This article might be interesting to read, but it may not be performing a close reading or literary analysis of Persepolis that compares the graphic novel version to its film adaptation. In other words, the article may be discussing the literary work for other reasons than performing an analysis of or making an argument about the text.

 Add / Reorder 

Activity: Is It Scholarly?

To make sure we are all on the same page, let's put our knowledge to the test.

Skim the following resources available through the links keeping in mind the characteristics we have discussed in class (for example: what is this information and where did it come from? Was it written by an expert? Where is this source published?).

Vote whether you think this source is Scholarly or Not Scholarly.

Source 1

Source 2

Source 3

Source 4

Source 5

Source 6

Source 7

Source 8

Citation Help

• Use the "cite" feature in most search tools to get you started with most resources (you will need to review and correct the citation).

• Cite Sources: Learn the correct way to cite sources by using these guides, tutorials, and videos.

  • MRU Guide to MLA style for Academic Work (2025-2026)

  • MRU Guide to Formatting Your MLA Paper (2025-2026)

  • MLA Handbook Plus

    • The go-to resource for writers of research papers and anyone citing sources. MLA Handbook Plus includes the full text of the ninth edition of the handbook.

  • The MLA Handbook (9th ed.) has two examples for how to cite comics:

    • Clowes, Daniel. David Boring. Eightball, no. 19, Fantagraphics, 1998.

    • Superman: Birthright. By Marc Waid, illustrated by Leinil Francis Yu, inked by Gerry Alanguilan, colored by Dave McCaig, DC Comics, 2005.

    • See also MLA's guidance on citing specific panels in a comic.

• Academic Success Workshops: Academic Success Workshops are 75 minutes long and are offered both in-person and online. Registration is required.

• Appointments: Personalized online or in-person 30-minute appointments with a Learning Strategist at Student Learning Services located on the 2nd floor of the Riddell Library & Learning Centre.

• Use the Service Desk on the 1st floor of the RLLC for assistance as well as the library chat feature on the library website for quick citation questions.