• H O M E • C
O M I C S • W R I T E R 'S
N I B S • L I N K S
• B L
O G •
C O N T A C T •
GRAMMAR/RHETORIC
For
the College Classroom
• S
C R I B B L I N G S •
PRIMITIVE ARCHER MAGAZINE
Hunting
Through
Medieval Literature
INTERDISCIPLINARY
HUMANITIES
Classroom
Comics: Children's
Medium and the New Literacy
GODDESSES
IN WORLD CULTURE
The
Maiden with a Thousand
Slippers
INTERDISCIPLINARY
HUMANITIES
Peter
Pan
HORSE
& RIDER MAGAZINE
A Whisper and a Prayer
COURSE CURRICULUM
ARTICLE
Christine de Pizan
CONFERENCE
PAPER
Hostages
in the Rose Garden
After
leaving the corporate world, I returned to school to earn a Master's Degree
in English and began teaching and writing. I wrote for a wide audience
that included popular magazines, scholarly journals, and textbooks. Conference
papers took me all over the country to speak on myriad subjects ranging
from fairy tales, comics and science fiction to Renaissance and Medieval
literature, and all things noir.
As a professor at California State University, East Bay I taught critical reading and writing to a culturally diverse mix of college students. I also taught many literature courses including Comics as American Literature, Short Film, Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, American Master Works, Children's Literature, Shakespeare and more.
I've started a new venture in the publishing world that feeds my need to write and to create beautiful designs.
EVERWHEN Press and YELLOW DUCK Press
Yellow
Duck Press produces children's picture books, comic picture books,
and leveled readers that are whimsical, fun, and educational. The "Kitty
Cat Cousins" series offers children a charming set of books starring
their favorite felines who have dreams and problems also experienced by
young readers. The "Holiday Keepers" series tells stories about
how our holidays started and are celebrated. Level 1 to 3 readers can
"Sail Into Reading" with readers for the aspiring book gobbler.
Yellow Duck Press also produces journals for kids encouraging thankfulness or inspiring kids to turn off their devices and turn on their imaginations.
Parents, grandparents, and guardians can find creativity supplies for children at Yellow Duck Press. These include blank comic books, cursive practice workbooks, and composition notebooks (college-ruled and dotted midline writing paper). Some contain a Live Margin Edge, a special feature that makes each book stand out. Riffle the pages like a flip book to reveal a rising rocketship, a spider descending, a jellyfish rising, or a growing alphabet.
As an award-winning author and educator with over 15 years of teaching, reporting and publishing experience I strive to create fun (and educational) books for kids.
See all kid's titles at: https://www.amazon.com/author/yellowduck.press
Everwhen
Press is a boutique enterprise with a small offering of carefully
curated designs including journals, graph paper notebooks, adult coloring
books, blank comic books, cursive practice workbooks, and logbooks for
the book lover.
Everwhen Press also produces 45-Day Sobriety and Living Clean reflective journals as well as the Just Today workbook.
Many of Everwhen’s books are unique and feature a Live Margin Edge, a margin that works like a flip book. Riffle the pages and watch a spider descend, a jellyfish rise, or horses gallop.
A variety of Everwhen journals have beautiful public domain wraparound artwork covers. Too much of our historical artwork is ignored and just stuffed away in a museum, luckily some museums feel the same way and offer beautiful paintings and engravings to the public.
See more at: https://www.amazon.com/author/everwhen.press
Bear
Meadow Press was created to release full-length texts and selected
works by others.
See more at: https://doreripley.wixsite.com/bear-meadow-press
ONCE an Educator, Always and Educator
When I began teaching, I often taught intensive writing, or what was once called remediation, and those classes are filled with students who are uncomfortable with texts. They don’t want to read them and they don’t want to write them because they haven’t been successful with the written word. So when students arrived for the first day of class with a graphic novel in hand, I know they thought my class was going to be easy. And that was my goal. If students and readers believe intensive reading and writing is going to be fairly painless, they will relax long enough to think critically about what is going on in the graphic novel’s panels. Instead of parroting back written text, they’ll have to interpret the panels, and join the conversation taking placing on the pages of a graphic novel. What's more students expand their college-level vocabulary by finding visual definitions for words, and surprisingly, visual vocabulary seems to "stick," showing up used properly in student essays.
Why comics?
Comics are still important to me, especially as an educator. As a contributor to the now defunct New York-based Graphic Novel Reporter, I was lucky enough to visit and interview some of the most creative people on the pop culture scene. If you get the chance to visit your local comic convention, do it! It's a great way to spend a day.
For college-level comic reading, assignment suggestions and more, click on >Graphic Novels for the College Classroom
Teaching with visuals in the college classroom
Visuals can also teach argumentation and underlying assumptions, or warrants - those fundamental beliefs taken for granted by both readers andwriters. Single-panel cartoons (The New Yorker or political) are great for teaching implicit assumptions by asking what a reader needs to know in order to understand the joke or to create a caption to accompany a visual.
One of the easiest ways to teach rhetoric, including ethos, pathos, logos and logical fallacies is through the use of visuals, especially TV advertisements.
For college-level aids and assignments using advertisements to teach rhetoric, click on >Grammar/Rhetoric for the College Classroom
