Abstract

As an arts-informed qualitative case study, this thesis is positioned at the intersection of comics, community art education and lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer (LGBT/Q) youth studies. Specifically, it examined a comics creation program entitled the Youth Enrichment Services Comic Book Project (YES CBP) that I taught as a community art educator at a youth centre in New York City serving LGBT/Q youth. The research illuminates the issue of adapting comics pedagogy to the specific interests of two learners and to the safe space social context of an LGBT youth centre. A sociological lens – Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of practice – was employed to understand comics pedagogy and comics creation as social practices within community art education. The study employed a customized methodology combining qualitative case study research and arts-informed research, leading to the use of comics creation as a form of thematic analysis that rendered data into a series of large comics pages. With its customized methodology, the thesis also investigated methodological intersections between qualitative research and comics practices. This thesis broadens conceptualizations of CAE practice and pedagogical relations through Bourdieusian concepts of field, capital, habitus and interest.