Author: Vera Camden

by Vera J. Camden and Valentino L. Zullo

At a recent American literature conference, a creative writing professor told us he was using comics in his classroom. As two English professors who have taught comics for many years, we were intrigued and asked him, how? He explained that his students used generative AI to create images paired with typed text. We demurred and asked what the point was of making AI-comics in the classroom when for us, creating comics has always been about reconstituting the mind/body connection and about using one’s hands (our first tools) as a “way of thinking” (Chute 2019, 629). Our colleague’s response was: “Hey, this isn’t an art class!” It seemed clear that, for him, hand-drawing was for children, maybe for artists, but that for “critical-thinking” adults AI was the way to go.

We beg to differ and hope here to explain why! We contend that writing and drawing by hand is a human privilege and that, akin to psychoanalysis, it can be an invitation to self-reflection. We dread the prospect of a world in which generative AI turns the work of making into something done for us, and not by us. Whatever pedagogical applications AI may eventually have, no technology should alienate students from their embodied creative capacities, beginning with the use of their hands.

Continue reading “Does AI Squander the Magic of Making Comics in the Classroom? A Psychoanalytic Perspective”