Grants

The Center for Comics Studies actively seeks external funding to support our collaborative efforts to pursue our four-fold mission to teach impactful and inspiring comics-focused courses, to undertake transformative research in comics, to promote the use of the SDSU Library’s growing collection of comics and graphic novels, and to connect with the wider San Diego community and beyond about the power of comics to impact the individual and to imagine audacious solutions to seemingly unsolvable problems.

Using Comics to Teach Social Justice

2023-2024
NEH Institute for K-12 Educators: $175,000
Elizabeth Pollard and Pamela Jackson (Co-PIs) and Katie Sciurba (K-12 Lead)

This grant will fund a two-week, twenty-five participant residential Summer Institute for K-12 Educators. The two-week institute is scheduled to take place 14-29 July 2024, and will include lectures and workshops in the first week and a half on SDSU’s campus and then will include attending panels during the four-day Comic-Con International. Participants will: 1) engage with experienced SDSU teacher-scholars who have developed vibrant comics curriculum addressing the medium’s usefulness for engaging social justice themes of relevance to humanities research; 2) explore SDSU’s extensive comics collection for pedagogical ideas and teachable content; and 3) participate in the thriving local comics convention scene; in order to 4) develop comics-related lesson plans suitable to their own state content/skills standards in multiple humanistic disciplines.

 

Building a Comics and Social Justice Curriculum

2022-2024
Humanities Initiatives at Hispanic-Serving Institutions: $149,998
Elizabeth Pollard and Pamela Jackson, Co-PIs

This two-year initiative is seeking to: 1) develop ten new courses that will deepen and expand SDSU’s humanistic comics curriculum, 2) use these courses to populate our proposed certificate in Comic Studies, and 3) support workshops that bring other scholars to campus to energize comic studies at SDSU. 

 

Building Capacity for Research and Teaching with Comics and Graphic Art

2021-2023
Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Forum Grant: $149,305
Pamela Jackson and Elizabeth Pollard, Co-PIs

This was a two-year National Leadership Grant to develop and convene a National Forum designed to: 1) establish a robust network of research libraries using comics to promote innovations in learning, scholarship, and community engagement; 2) facilitate sustainable campus and community partnerships around the use of comics; 3) explore opportunities to promote the teaching of social justice issues through comics and the ways in which research libraries can support those efforts; and, 4) suggest a model for research-based engagement with comics and community partners that can be adapted for use in other regions of the country.