Examining the Cold War in the 1980s with Comic Books

Abstract

The role of literacy in social studies education has been greatly elevated over the last decade. The National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) models through the indicators of its C3 Framework how to strengthen K-12 students’ disciplinary thinking, literacy, and argumentation skills in the four core social studies disciplines: civics, history, geography, and economics. One resource that social studies teachers can use to address the indicators within the C3 Framework is comic books. Comic books employ both visual and textual modalities to convey meaning, through text boxes, people’s facial expressions, and imagery to capture the author’s arguments. The various modes of communication utilized in comic books allow students to construct meaning. In this article, we discuss how to use two comic books, Batman: Ten Nights of the Beast, and Suicide Squad: Trial by Fire, to teach about the Cold War in the 1980s. We start by giving a brief historical overview of the Cold War in the 1980s. Then, the focus of the article shifts to provide an examination of the potential benefits of utilizing comic books. This section also discusses how popular culture reflects the issues, values, and beliefs of an historical era. Two activities are given that scaffold how high school social studies teachers can employ these comic books to analyze important components of the Cold War in the 1980s. The steps and resources needed to implement our activities are provided.