Images of Struggle: Teaching Human Rights with Graphic Novels
ABSTRACT The authors explore how graphic novels can be used in the middle and high school social studies classroom to teach human rights. The article begins with a rationale on the benefits of using graphic novels. It next focuses on four graphic novels related to human rights issues: Maus I: A Survivor's Tale: My Father Bleeds (Speigelman 1986), Footnotes in Gaza: A Graphic Novel (Sacco 2010), War Brothers: The Graphic Novel (McKay 2013), and March Book Two (Lewis and Aydin 2015). Each graphic novel is briefly discussed and classroom activities are provided. Example activities demonstrate how the texts and visuals within them can be combined to teach human rights issues. An appendix of human rights-related graphic novels is also included.