1st Edition
Performing Kamishibai An Emerging New Literacy for a Global Audience
Kamishibai (paper-theater), a Japanese picture-storytelling medium, is gaining global interest as we move from a text-based culture to one that emphasizes multiple semiotic systems and performance. This is the first volume to explore the potential of kamishibai as a dynamic "new" interactive medium for teaching multimodal communication and shows how synchronizing oral, visual and gestural modes develops students’ awareness of all modes of communication as potential resources in their learning. By examining the multiple modes involved in kamishibai through actual student performances over several venues, this volume overturns commonly held expectations about literacy in the classroom and provides a critical perspective on assumptions about other media. It offers much-needed information about a medium that is attracting interest from educators, academics and artists worldwide.
Introduction: Why Kamishibai? 2. Multiple Kamishibais: The Evolving History of a Traveling Medium 3. The Modal Fluidity of Mr. G’s Classroom 4. Entering Narrative through the Kineikonic Mode 5. Illustration as Gesture: Synchronizing Hand, Voice, and Eye 6. The Three Rs: Writing, Recursivity, and Repertoire 7. The Modal Fixity of Ms. P’s Classroom 8. Upending Classroom Hierarchies by Juggling Multiple Modes 9. Performing Magic Conclusion: The Emergent Qualities of Text
Biography
Tara McGowan conducts kamishibai workshops in schools, libraries, and museums. In 2010, she published The Kamishibai Classroom: Engaging Multiple Literacies through the Art of ‘Paper Theater.’ Tara earned her PhD in literacy at the University of Pennsylvania and currently works at the American Philosophical Society Museum in Philadelphia.
"This is a fascinating and well-researched book. McGowan draws our attention to important deficits in traditional 'mono-modal' education, and presents us with a lively, interesting way of overcoming them." - Kate Katafiasz, Other Education Journal
