Blog

  • Deaf Comics

    I have always wanted to learn sign language, and my labmate, who is an interpreter, recently began teaching me American Sign Language. It’s been very fun to finally be learning it, and a great education in non-verbal languages (which I’m obviously interested in!). She also recently sent me a link to That Deaf Guy, a…

  • New Article: Comics vs. Manga

    I recently had a new paper appear in the journal Image[&]Narrative about the difference in the structuring of comic panels in American comics and Japanese manga. Here’s the abstract: A different kind of cultural frame: An analysis of panels in American comics and Japanese mangaNeil Cohn The growing interest and influence of Japanese manga (“comics”)…

  • Comics and pictorial metaphor

    I recently discovered that the “Semiotics Institute Online” has a few full online courses that are offered related to comics. One of those is a class on metaphor pictorial theory taught by Charles Forceville, who has been looking a lot at comics and other media. Of particular interest is lecture #7, which directly discusses conceptual…

  • 99 examples of narrative

    Matt Madden’s 99 Ways to Tell a Story is a great exercise in creativity where he draws the same scene (him stopping work to get food, while talking with his partner) in 99 different unique ways. I’ve known of the book and its great content for years, but since Matt recently gave me a copy…

  • Busy Times…

    I wish I could blog more these days, but life has been crazy. I’m still playing catch-up from my trip to California earlier in the week (and to Rhode Island the week before), but lots has been going on… Over the past few weeks I’ve submitted several articles to journals, have readied another, and am…

  • CNS 2011

    I will be speaking next week at the Cognitive Neuroscience Society conference in San Francisco. If you’re in the area and coming to the conference, I’ll be presenting in Slide Session 7, on Tuesday, April 5, 1:00 – 3:00 pm, Grand Ballroom B: This is your brain on comics: The impact of structure and meaning…

  • Comic Scramblers

    Busy-ness has been in high gear here in visual language research land. I’m working on submitting several papers for publications over the next few weeks, and am over half the way through writing my dissertation proposal. Plus, my wonderful assistants are preparing our next round of experiments… Speaking of which, one of my assistants, Suzi…

  • Review: Children Interpret a Comic

    This insightful article examines children’s understandings of comic books over time using a Western comic A Gunman in Town!. The study looked at ten children in each of 3rd, 5th, and 8th grade, balanced for gender and race with diverse socio-economic status. They were shown each frame individually and asked its contents following each panel.…

  • NY Times book review… of my parents

    Every now and then I’m compelled to plug something friends or relations do, and I’m super excited that my parents’ latest book has been reviewed in the New York Times. They have written and published books about treating eating disorders for almost three decades, and this is the 25th anniversary of their first publication, Bulimia,…

  • Talk this Friday

    For those of you in the Boston area…I will be giving a lecture next Friday, Jan 28th at 4pm in the Tufts University Psychology Department that is open to the public. The name of the talk is “What is ‘Visual Language’?: What Comics can tell us about the mind” and it covers an overview of…