Empathy is generally fostered within education, through a variety of materials. Here, we explore how students can use a comic text in upper secondary school to construct empathy towards ‘the other’. The study builds on observations of 91 Swedish students discussing the comic story “Report from Ukraine”. Results show that students construct empathy through ‘otherness’ as being both similar and different to themselves, and how imagery is used to construct this, related to students’ previous knowledge. This is indicative of how comics can engage students in discussions on empathy, relating current global events and issues of ethnicity and otherness.

Ville Ranta’s homepage offers links to two distinct comics blogs: one in Finnish, one in French. These choices are logical. Few other Nordic cartoonists have embraced the French comics scene with the same persistence as Ranta. In the autobiographical wing of his body of work, three books from a catalog of many more, Ranta expresses a constant longing for France. In the first two memoirs—2006's Papa est un peu fatigué ("Daddy’s a Little Bit Tired") and 2014's La Jérusalem du pauvre ("The Poor Man’s Jerusalem")—which focus on his struggles to balance an artistic career with family life, this theme serves predominately as a sidetrack. Ranta satisfies his yearning for France with the familiar accoutrements of a young Francophile: red wine, Serge Gainsbourg records and Breton striped shirts. But he also visits French comics festivals and attends drawing retreats in Paris. The third book, published in French by Edition Rackham in 2021, is fully devoted to his dream of making a name on the French comics scene. Succès, mode d’emploi ("Success: A User Manual"), known in Finnish by the even bolder title “How I Conquered France,” documents a challenging journey from humiliating experiences courting arrogant publishers and their broken promises to collaborating with Lewis Trondheim and having a book accepted into the Official Selection of the Angoulême International Comics Festival in 2011.

Jean-Christophe Menu is a cartoonist, an editor, a critic, but is best known as co-founder of the seminal alternative publishing house L'Association in 1990. Formed by Menu, Lewis Trondheim, David B., Mattt Konture, Patrice Killoffer, Stanislas Barthélémy & Frédéric "Mokeït" Van Linden, L'Association not only breathed new life into a moribund French comics culture, but has been credited with redefining the very medium of comics. And the combative ideologue Menu is often described as the primary driving force - to a certain extent, the captain who steered the ship.

Research topic/aim

Ambitions to promote empathy has been discussed from different angles and contexts, and empathy is generally seen to be fostered within the realm of education, achieved through a variety of materials. Researchers have analyzed the ways in which empathy can be enhanced through art (Phillips, 2003), literature (Rydén Gramner, 2022), and photography (Lorenz, 2011). This article sets to contribute to this research by including comics; a medium that has been granted sparse academic attention in education (see Wallner & Eriksson Barajas, 2020).

Theoretical framework

Identity construction can be seen as establishing a border between the self and the other by articulating who we are not; while fiction enables us to see ourselves through others (Felski, 2008). Therefore, the purpose of this article is to explore how students can use a comic text in upper secondary school to construct empathy towards ‘the other’.

Methodological design

This article builds on data from five Swedish upper secondary classes in Year 10 (16 years old), with 91 students and 4 teachers. The students read a comic story in Swedish called “Report from Ukraine”, a freely accessible online comic from Swedish publisher Galago. Students read the comic and discussed it in small groups during a one-hour lesson. Some group discussions lasted only about 15 minutes, while others talked for almost the whole hour. Video and audio were recorded, resulting in a total of 13 hours and 18 minutes of data. This was then analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006), focusing on students’ verbal and non-verbal actions, in order to explore how students construct empathy. The category of ‘them and us’ turned out to be the most common (n=38 out of 218), wherein students compared, e.g., Swedes and Ukrainians.

Expected conclusions/findings

The results can be summarized through three themes: 1) Portrayal of the other, wherein students construct otherness as being both similar and different to themselves, and how imagery is used to construct this. 2) Knowledge , how students’ knowledge about the situation in Ukraine, the invasion, etc. differs, and how this is important for their (empathic) reading of the story. 3) Fear and other emotions, containing both students’ emotional narratives about the war, as well as perceived

emotions interpreted through the comic characters.

Relevance to Nordic educational research

We consider this to be indicative of how comics, as multimodal narratives, can engage students in discussions on empathy, relating current global events and issues of ethnicity and otherness to their personal experiences and individual viewpoints.

References:

Braun, V., & Clarke, V. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3(2), 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa

Felski, R. (2008). Uses of Literature. Blackwell Publishing.

Lorenz, L. S. (2011). A way into empathy: A ‘case’of photo-elicitation in illness research. Health 15 (3), 259-275. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459310397976

Phillips, L. C. (2003). Nurturing empathy. Art Education 56 (4), 45-53. https://doi.org/10.1080/00043125.2003.11653509

Rydén Gramner, A. (2022). Cold Heart, Warm Heart: On fiction, interaction, and emotion in medical education [Doctoral dissertation]. Linköping University.

Wallner, L., & Eriksson Barajas, K. (2020). Using Comics and Graphic Novels in K-9 Education: An Integrative Literature Review. Studies in Comics 11(1), 37-54. https://doi.org/10.1386/stic_00014_1

Under 80-talet förändrades den svenska seriekulturen i grunden. Ingen symboliserar denna förändring mer än den excentriske Horst Schröder och hans förlag Epix. I Epix, Pox, Tung Metall och en rad andra tidningar introducerade Schröder svenska läsare till tidens mest betydelsefulla serier från hela världen. Allt tydligt märkt med ”Serier för vuxna” i ena hörnet på omslagen för att markera att det rörde sig om ett innehåll väsensskilt från Kalle Anka eller Fantomen. Under en period på tio år fick Epix uppleva både triumfer och skandaler. Nu berättar alla inblandade för första gången hela historien om det mytomspunna förlaget som var en adrenalinspruta rätt i hjärtat på serie-Sverige. 

Robert Aman – kulturskribent och serieforskare – har inte bara intervjuat Schröder och Epix-redaktionens mångtaliga medarbetare, utan även svenska och internationella seriestjärnor som publicerat sig i Epix tidningar, konkurrenter som gått i klinch med Schröder (eller tvärtom), journalister som rapporterat om förlagets förehavanden, kritiker och aktivister som helst av allt önskade att tidningar som Epix och Pox inte existerade. Och många fler. 

Serier för vuxna berättar ett stycke vild och lätt osannolik litteraturhistoria. Kokain gömt i kopieringsmaskinen, åtal för olaga våldspornografi och en kidnappning av en femåring är endast några av de ämnen som berörs. Men framför allt är det en berättelse om en grupp unga eldsjälar, övertygade om att seriekonsten är ämnad för något större. Denna bok slungar läsaren tillbaka till 80-talet och innanför väggarna hos redaktionen på Frejgatan 19 i Stockholm, där luften var tjock av stora förhoppningar, brinnande entusiasm, gnisslande konflikter – och svart rök från Horsts pipa. 

Boken är rikt illustrerad med omslagsbilder, utdrag från serier, pressklipp och fotografier, varav flera aldrig tidigare har publicerats.

Som en Bruce Springsteen-låt. Serieforskare Robert Aman skriver om Frank Santoros hyllade "Pittsburgh" som i veckan släpps i svensk översättning.

Med champagne i glasen utväxlade den tidigare och nya ägaren en skål. Seriebörsen i Tannefors var under fredagskvällen full av besökare som ville ta avsked av butikens grundare Peter Andersson.