This page is referenced by:

• 1 2017-10-11T16:40:10+00:00 The Myth And The Title Page 83 plain 2018-09-26T22:13:02+00:00
  Let’s look at the “title page” of some students’ comics about their experiences writing the literature review. The idea is that the title of a work serves as a “summary” of the comic’s story; but the title also expresses the students’ attitude toward the literature review. The attitude is often continued within students’ comics, as the students tell their stories about writing the literature review.
  
  Examples of titles from student comics:
       "Trials and Tribulations of Writing a Lit Review: My Own Personal Hell" 
       "The Odyssey of Impossibility" 
       "Playmaker’s Lit Review Conquest"
       "Four Months in 204: A Research Communications Class of Epic Proportions" 
       "Weeks of Hard Work: The Process of Making a Lit Review"
       "What the Lit?!?!?!?: Post Lit Review"
       "League of Scheibels"
       "The Dreadful Literature Review"
       "How to Make Your Review Lit"
       "The Story of the Dreaded Lit Review"
       "How to Survive a Lit Review: A Rule Book to Success"
       "My Worst Nightmare"
       "A Journey Through the Semester: How I Created My Lit Review"
       "The Seven Stages of Grief in Writing a Literature Review"
       "The Journey of Writing a Lit Review"
       "CMST 204: The Deadly Literature Review"
       "Carina the Comic vs. The Lit Review"
       "The Literature Review of Death"
  
  Students’ comics were created after the students finished writing the literature review. However, what is clear is that these titles suggest that students’ attitude toward the “literature review” is that of a fearsome challenge. The “literature review” is an object often viewed as a dangerous opponent. The “literature review” is their nemesis, their enemy. And the process is…a quest.
  
  The title pages often suggest a combat myth (Burke, 1966). In doing so, the titles raise the image of the student to that of a hero. This is done, in part, by the students’ creating an image of the literature review to that of a fearsome challenge. The writing of the literature review is put forward as the battling of opposing gods, the student and the literature review. If the literature review is the students’ nemesis, understand that the word nemesis is rooted in the name of a Greek goddess, one who inflicts vengeance and justice (Guralnik, p. 830). In the course of the battle, the student-hero discovers her divinity? Thus, the titles forecast an “epic” battle, a mythic journey. The student is valorized, becomes a hero, even god-like.
  
  The words in the titles suggest the idea of myth (cf. Burke, 1966; Campbell, 1973). And the titles of the comics—all written after completing the literature review—suggest the difficulty linked to the assignment, but more than that, reveal students’ attitude toward their work, and their desire to retell their individual stories of writing the literature review terms that seem—to me—mythic.
  
  The titles of students’ comics are represented in mythic and ideological terms. For now, let’s consider “ideology” to represent ideas concerning issues of social power. Consider the words: Death, Odyssey, Hell, Epic, Dread, Journey, Trials, Conquest, and “vs.” (short for “versus,” which suggests a contest between opposing parties or ideas). These titles try to sum up students’ experiences with writing the “literature review.” In creating the title of the comic, the student performs a symbolic act that “dances an attitude” about the student’s relationship with the literature review that the title expresses (Burke, 1973, p. 9; see also Heath, 1986, chap. 4).
  
  These titles suggest power relationships that are barely hidden by the titles. The literature review is an example of “academic writing” that academic disciplines such as Communication Studies, and universities and professors want students to learn. In my class the “literature review” is a synthesis of published research studies that serve as an argument that justifies the asking of a research question (e.g. How do same-sex siblings express their jealousy?). Students don’t want to write literature reviews. But I want them to. And so, does my academic department. And my university. Thus, the “literature review” is a form of the “dominant values” that the comics may either support or question and critique (McAllister, Sewell, & Gordon, 2001, p. 2; see also, Duncan, Smith & Levitz, 2015, pp. 339-346).
  
  Let’s take a closer look at the words and images of two title pages; the images below reveal much about the mythic nature of the literature review assignment. We'll be looking at the content in terms of myth and considering the word “dread,” since both Nicole Franko’s and Alexandra Fiore’s title pages feature variations of the word (“dreadful” and “dreaded”).
  
  According to the Webster’s New World Dictionary, the word “dread” suggests intense fear as well as “reverence” and “awe.” While “reverence” is often used in reference to things that are sacred or holy, the word “awe” swings both ways. And the word “awe” is associated with things that are “awful” (e.g., hate, death) as well as things that are “awesome” (e.g., love, god). So, we can be awed by both these things: love (also called eros) and death (also called thanatos). We can understand how the ideas of love and death fit together in terms of students’ desire, which is a kind of love, to complete a hard task—like writing of the “literature review”—and the completion or gratification of that desire, which we can understand as the death of that desire. In this sense, “love” and “death” reflect the purpose of the myth (Burke, 1966).
  
  Nicole Franco’s title page shows her facial expression, suggesting a sense of awe or apprehension, directed outward toward the reader. The words “The Dreaded Lit Review” is colored red, with the image of blood dripping from the letters. Although blood sometimes suggests death, it also suggests life. The “Dreaded Lit Review” bleeds, just like Nicole. Thus, she and “The Dreaded Lit Review” have something in common; they share the substance of blood. And the sharing of substance provides for a means for Nicole to identify with the literature review. They both live. This is significant, because the “’awesome properties’ of blood” create the possibility of various types of interactions between the student and the literature review (Makarius, 1993, p. 71; emphasis added; see also Durkheim, 1897, cited in Makarius).
  
  Alexandra Fiore's title page’s photo shows Alexandra looking up at the title (“The Dreadful Literature Review”), as if she is pleading or seeking intervention from a divine power (“Can this be over yet?”) to deliver her from an evil task, which inspires her sense of awe. In both titles, the images of student’s hands and facial expressions support the idea that the literature review is something that is both feared, and awed. However, Alexandra’s title, with its rainbow coloring, suggests something hopeful, something mythically unifying and divine.
  
  The myth summarized in these images is that of the student in the middle of a battle. In the battle, the student’s nemesis is the literature review. Importantly, the titles suggest that the literature review is a worthy adversary, a match for the student. The outcome of the battle—victory for one, and the defeat of the other—is still to be determined, although in reality, by the time the students have created the comic, they have completed “the dreaded literature review.” Thus, the comics’ titles suggest a dangerous enemy, making the student’s conquest of that enemy heroic.
  
  In having students create comics about doing the literature review, I am opening a door that allows students to create a narrative or a story that can reflect on the process of doing traditional academic writing (i.e., logic, argumentative reasoning in support of a thesis, and citing academic sources as evidence to support their argument). I am also asking the students to place themselves at the center of the story. In contrast, traditional academic writing asks the author to disappear behind the argument being made. So, my assignment—the comic—asks the students to place their own experiences of writing front and center, to tell the story in the first-person (i.e., “I,” “me,” “my”), and to use images as well as words.
  
  Nicole’s title drips blood, suggesting the transformation of the literature review from a bloodless, non-living “assignment” into a living, bleeding thing, marking the literature review’s metamorphosis into a “trickster.” The trickster is a mythic figure, and Nicole’s title reflects shape-shifting abilities. Other characteristics of tricksters are as creators of chaos; tricksters may uphold or disrupt existing social orders or hierarchies while making fun of them, breaking boundaries; tricksters may lose control or gets others to lose control; they may be obsessed with sex and swear a lot; and they tend to disappear or dissolve when the story is over (Basil-Morozow, 2015; Hynes & Doty, 1993).
  
  If the student is the hero, the literature review represents both the shadow and trickster sides of the hero. As a “shadow” image, the literature review is shown as an extension of a student’s shame, fear, and lack of control. But in the image of the “trickster” such fear and shame are acknowledged and may show the student’s reactions to the literature review assignment. Thus, within the comic the trickster may serve to highlight the existing social orders. Nicole’s bleeding title brings the literature to life, but the shedding of blood also suggests the literature review’s vulnerability; it can be conquered by the student.
  
  In looking at the titles of the comics, the “literature review” (and its abbreviation, “lit review”) is often mentioned, although the term “trickster” is not. However, the idea that the literature review has been transformed into a tricky adversary, the student’s nemesis, is a start to understanding the literature review as a “trickster.”
  
  Many of the students’ comics’ titles reflect students’ choices to name or rename the “literature review” as the “lit review.” What to make of this? This is not merely a shortening, an abbreviation of a word. No. “Lit” is a change in the substance and meaning of a word. Students are symbol-users, word-creators and the creation of the “lit review” reflects and selects meanings somehow related to students’ experiences of writing the “literature review.”
  
  Consider the title page of Justice Domingo. “Lit” pushes “literature” aside as “lit” takes the spotlight. The word “literature” refers to written research reports; the word is class-based and high-brow; it is a word used by academics, by professors. In contrast, “lit” is more than mere abbreviation; rather, “lit” is current student slang, suggesting brightness, excitement, action, even sexuality, and alcohol and drugs (e.g., “lit up”) (see Mish, p. 726). The trickster connotations of “lit” are understood as cool and crazy, manic, and even out-of-control. “Lit” brings it closer to the student.
   
  In this sense, the “lit review” is breaking the boundaries of what a “literature review” is supposed to be; it is not the proper name for a term paper; rather, it seeks a different shape, a different name, one that suggests that it may be out-of-control, given its “lit” potential in terms of sex and alcohol. All these ideas or themes or motifs are the sign of the trickster (see Bassil-Morozow, pp. 12-31). And the renaming the “lit” review also suggests an empowerment of the students by mocking the high-brow origins (“literature”), taking it down a peg, making an ideological challenge to the dominant values of academia.
  
  The change from “literature” to “lit” reflects the students’ myth-making abilities, and attests to students’ ability to establish their own ideological foundations, their own shaping of schoolyard power relations. So, let’s accept the possibility that the term “literature review” and its “lit” alter-ego might possess complexity and mystery that might be revealed in the telling of the myth.
  
  Consider Liat Lieberman’s title page, which reflects ideas associated with both shadow and trickster. “What the Lit?!?!?!?” substitutes “lit” for “fuck” (as in “What the fuck?!?!?!?”), which suggests the student’s shock and outrage at having to do the “literature review.” It suggests a rebelling against the structured world assigned to the student; and this rebellion is the student’s strategic projection of the student’s loss of control, an idea common to the trickster. Finally, the student’s use of the term “lit” as a substitute for “fuck” might be linked to the trickster’s potential for boundary-breaking and sexual obsession (see Bassil-Morozow, Chap. 1).  The image of the “grinning skull” suggests that the student has survived a near-death experience, while successfully defeating the literature review. This works well with the comic’s subtitle, “Post Lit Review,” which suggests the word “posthumous,” meaning “after death” (Guralnik, p. 1113). The associations between sex and death are many, mythic, and need not be recounted here.  
  
  Finally, consider Carina Adra’s title page. The term “versus” commonly is used to suggest a contest, in which the outcome is uncertain. However, the title suggests a bit more. On one hand, “Carina the Comic” suggests a merging of the person, Carina, with the comic that Carina has created. Her manipulation of the photograph of herself, to which lines, spots, and tears are added, creates a character that seems not completely human; in short, Carina resembles a character one might see in a comic book. And if we consider Carina to be the comic, then the title suggests a contest between two different ways of writing, the comic versus the literature review. Carina is moving beyond saying that students should experience both types of writing; rather, she is suggesting that these different types of writing are locked in combat. And as the battle begins, it is the narrative within the comic that controls the story, the myth. Traditional logic and reason is the enemy. And as a form of writing, the comic has mythic potential, which is a staple in the universe of comic superheroes (see Duncan, et al.).
  
  Carina’s title suggests that the idea of a trickster is NOT limited to being a character in a story, but that the telling of the story in the form of a comic might be considered a form of trickster discourse in its own right. That is, the “sinful” nature of comic discourse—the combined use of both words and images—represents an ideology in opposition to the accepted and dominant patterns of academic discourse (see Bartholomae, 1995; Doueihi, 1993; Elbow, 1991). The comic—as an enactment of the trickster—breaks the structural boundaries of existence, pushing itself to combine with the student hero.
  
  In sum, the student-hero myth and the ideological power relations are reflected in both the words of the titles and the images shown in students’ comics’ title pages. The analysis of the comic titles previews the student journey, a mythic confrontation between students and the “dreaded lit review.” The literature review is represented as both the “shadow,” a projection of the shame and fear of the students, and as the expression of the student as “trickster,” in the transformed “lit” review.
  
  Although “lit” is an abbreviation for “literature,” it also refers to being drunk. But it also refers to light. Thus, the comic shines light on the literature review, shines light on the shadow, and acknowledges the shame of the shadow. Thus, the “lit” review, portrayed in the comic, reveals the student’s trickster sensibilities.
• 1 media/Red_ComicBG.jpg 2018-01-24T22:00:47+00:00 The Battle 46 plain 2018-09-26T22:35:33+00:00 The cover of Carina’s comic pits Carina against the “lit review” (or more, properly, the “literature review”). The tears on her face suggests that the battle between her and the “lit review” was hard-won, and that she experienced pain and difficulty. Most importantly, in calling herself “Carina the Comic,” she is identifying herself with the comic rather than with the “lit review.” The title page recognizes the often combative relationship between the student and the "lit review. (For students, it seems, the “lit review” is not merely an assignment, it is a battle and the enemy.)
  
  The title page from Nicole Franko’s comic is dripping blood. And the “lit review” is shown as something that fills students with “dread.” In creating an image of the “lit review” as something dreadful, something that oozes blood; and that which bleeds, also lives. The students create an image of the assignment as something to be feared, something that might, in fact, defeat them. But in creating a fearful adversary, they are making it possible to become a hero. Because to be a student hero requires that you defeat something that could also defeat you.
• 1 2017-10-11T16:53:09+00:00 The Lit(erature) Review As Shadow 45 plain 2018-09-26T22:05:28+00:00 Students represent the literature review as taking on the characteristics of living things, such as the blood dripping from the title page of Nicole Franko’s literature review. As a living thing, the literature review takes on human qualities related to personality, but also physical qualities. In doing so, students create images of a worthy adversary, one capable of defeating the student (Burke, 1966, p. 381). In myths, combat often takes place. Often this is internal but is projected outwards. In considering the literature review as an “enemy,” students’ comics often acknowledge the “extraordinary appearances and properties” of the enemy, the “distinctive habitation” of the enemy, and the enemy’s “divine origin” (p. 383).
  
  Early on the road of trials, while students are working on preliminary assignments, the literature review may be imagined as something frightening. At this point, there is no escape for the hero, for the enemy exists in the mind of the hero. The enemy represents an internal and imagined state of chaos and disorder.
  
  Creating the “literature review” is based on students’ understanding that it must be brought to exist into the world. It must go from an abstract “assignment” to becoming an actual paper, something that must be turned in, and something that will be “graded.” The student’s inner chaos must be confronted and externalized. It must be brought into existence; it must be disciplined and ordered. This is the mythic battle: the hero’s moving from disorder to order. In creating the literature review, the student creates a written harmonic cosmos out of the chaos.
  
  In Juliet Sivori’s comic, the literature review may be represented as an idea that resembles an actual physical object. Juliet’s imagined “death” in the class as a result of the literature review, is represented only as a black thought within a thought balloon. The image and words are doubled: the image colored black and the words “death” and “die.” The image of the black cloud brings with it fear and vulnerability and “thoughts of the grave” (Osborn, 1967, p. 117). The images and ideology suggest a battle, in which Juliet loses, even though she acknowledges that it is “time to start now though!”
  
  In Renee Samuelson’s comic, the literature review is given life, but is still shown as a written paper. Renee makes the literature review a worthy enemy, infusing it with a combative attitude who taunts Renee about her lack of knowledge (“you don’t even know [APA]”). Although Renee mortifies herself by admitting her own limitations (“I may suck at APA”) she shows her own combative nature, and provides reasons why she will triumph over the literature review (i.e., she is “perfectly capable” and has been “putting in 110% effort”). When the literature review taunts Renee again with the charge that Renee will “procrastinate” and will “not prevail,” Renee bests the literature review, using another body analogy (“F*** you!!!! Watch me!”) to victimize the literature review and redeem herself. The scene ends with Renee typing furiously. The conflict between Renee and the literature suggests Renee’s inner conflict and her discomfort with producing the literature review. However, within the context of the comic Renee’s inner trickster successfully combats the literature review. The action within the comic is contextualized by objects that position Renee as an industrious student: images of lined paper and a pencil.
  
  Renee acknowledges her limitations. And her redemption is signaled through her own mortification (“I may suck at APA…”), which is transcended through her ability to use technology; her “tools” include an online website. In contrast, the lit review is shamed by Renee’s accusing finger and her labeling the lit review in regard to sexual activity (“F*** you!”). The sexual references are her trickster.
  
  In other comics, the literature review takes on a physical presence and is often depicted as having an “extraordinary appearance” (Burke, 1966, p. 383). Several comics represent the literature review as a “monster.”
  
  In Seanna’s comic, she is actually grabbed by the “lit review,” who takes on a monstrous appearance, including bloodshot eyes, big teeth. And Seanna’s response (“Oops”) indicates that she has somehow miscalculated.
  
  Depicting one’s self as a monster is somewhat common in autobiographical memoirs, in which the narrator’s body may be seen as “monstrous” (see El Refaie, pp. 68-70). As a metaphor, monsters may be linked to the idea of the “uncanny,” which Freud (1919) characterized as something that “arouses dread” (cited in Schneider, 1999). Given the discussion of the “dreaded lit review,” the presence of monsters is not too surprising.
  
  In contrast to Seanna’s comic, other students confront the monster within dreams.
  
  In Sean’s comic, like Seanna’s, the “lit review monster” is an enemy of “extraordinary appearance” (Burke, p. 383), although it retains some aspects of human appearance, with eyes, nose, and mouth. However, the monster is terrifying to the student, suggesting a zombie that will cause the student’s death (“its gunna kill me”).
  
  The metaphor of the literature review as a monster may be interpreted as a manifestation of the student’s fears. But even here a monster is a “divine portent of misfortune” (Guralnik, p. 922; emphasis added), a warning the student conjures for themselves.
  In students’ comics, the monster sometimes emerges while the student is asleep. In the mythic road of trials, “the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms, where he [or she] must survive a succession of trials” (Campbell, p. 97). In a sense, the presence of the monster within Sean’s dream suggests his own “spiritual labyrinth” (p. 101).
  
  What to make of this, students’ representations of the literature review as a monster that can terrify students in their dreams? The student—now existing in the belly of the whale—confronts demons reflecting his or her own inner turmoil; the student faces dangers and problems that must somehow be resolved.
  
  In Jordan Phillips’s comic, the monster—again with ragged teeth and red eyes—appears within her “terrifying nightmare.” In this comic, the appearance of the monster is associated with the student’s avoidance or “procrastination.” The representation of “THE LITERATURE REVIEW” in reversed writing suggests something demonic—the literature review—that takes possession of the student’s body. This is perhaps a reference to the backward writing that appears on the skin of the character “Regan” in the movie The Exorcist, in which the devil takes possession of a child. However, in Jordan’s comic, the image of the monster is combined with a filing cabinet, an object found in a professor’s office. Thus, there is an association between the monster and the contents of the professor’s filing cabinet (e.g., journal articles), and by association, the professor (i.e., me). Unlike Sean Baker’s monster, however, Jordan’s monster speaks or “growls” at her (“You procrastinated doing meee!”).
  
  Jordan’s images show the student as someone who should be pitied, which suggests the need of mortification, in order to achieve the “purification of the self” (Campbell, p. 101; Burke, 1966), which can be accomplished by doing what is needed (“I should really get started!”), rather than doing what Jordan wants.
  
  Even in the guise of a “monster,” we may glimpse the literature review’s shadow and trickster characteristics. In Sean’s comic, the “literature review monster” suggests the student’s lack of control; it invades Sean’s sleep, suggesting the student’s powerlessness. However, Sean’s choice to represent the literature review as a monster suggests its shape-shifting abilities and its power, breaking through the structural boundaries of consciousness, entering the students’ comics as subconscious nightmares, suggesting the students’ desires to show themselves—with regard to having to write the “dreaded lit review”—as being out of control (Bassil-Morozow, pp. 56-57).
  
  In both Sean’s and Jordan’s comics, the presence of monsters within dreams draws on our understanding that events-of-the-day may invade our dreams. The idea that dreams may reflect “unconscious” processes or things that we might want to repress (e.g., a horribly difficult assignment) is part of understanding our relation to myth (see Burke, 1966, pp. 63-80; Campbell, pp. 63-64; 101-104). We might see the dream as a projection of the shadow, and the acknowledgment of the monster within the comic as a projection of the trickster, in which the student creates a monster they have brought fourth, a monster that serves the creation of a myth.
  
  As a metaphorical monster, the “lit review,” exists within a variety of contexts. Students have been exposed to monsters in numerous forms of popular culture, including comics, movies, and television. In such forms, the monsters are often “life-threatening.” And the fact that the monsters appear in dreams linking them with the lit review is interesting. For when the student wakes up, the monster is gone; as is common with monsters, “the monster always escapes” (Cohen, 1996, p. 4; see also, Clark, 1996). But we might want to extend the metaphor of the monster and consider “the monstrous nature of language itself” (Cohen, p. x), and by extension, the act of academic writing, which is part of students’ fear and shame, seems particularly open to its depiction as a monster.
  
  In sum, the comics present an image of the literature review as something dangerous, the student’s nemesis, able to dominate the student’s life. In other words, the literature review is given life by the hero-student and is shown to be a worthy adversary.  And with its boundary-breaking and shape-shifting characteristics, the literature review also represents the image of the student’s tricksterish impulses. In this sense, “the monster stands at the threshold . . . of becoming” (Cohen, p. 20). While there are “trickster” elements in students’ comics’ portrait of the literature review, there is a stronger sense of the “shadow” elements, which support the idea that students’ conception of the literature review is typically guided by the student’s shame and fear, which is retrospectively transformed in the comic.