Where image and text meet identity: Gifted students’ poetry comics and the crafting of “nerd identities”

Abstract

This article reports on a study of how a class of fifteen- and sixteen-year-old gifted high school students “mixed” the media of poetry and comics to unveil and interrogate (what they called) their “nerd identities.” Both co-authors constructed and co-taught a class within a literature-based comics course that led students through various writing processes that focused on the visual and textual properties of poetry and comics. Researchers asked: How may gifted students use poetry and comics to write about identity? How can the mixing of poetry and comics contribute to media literacy education? Using their poetry comics to connect their “nerd identities” to superheroes, students reported seeing parallels between the trials and tribulations of superhero origin stories and their own “gifted” identity.