G.16. Thinking In Comics: Visual Narratives, Epistemic Injustice And Sociological Imagination In Education
Comics have increasingly entered the sociological debate as epistemic and pedagogical devices capable of interrogating the politics of knowledge that structure educational institutions. Their multimodal nature destabilizes the textual normativity that traditionally defines what is recognized as legitimate knowledge within schooling. By integrating visual, affective and narrative registers, comics provide forms of meaning-making that illuminate dimensions of experience, embodiment, vulnerability, marginality, resistance, often silenced or rendered invisible in dominant educational discourses. In this sense, visual narratives represent a fruitful terrain for addressing epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007; Jofré 2024): they enable the articulation of situated knowledges and counter-narratives that challenge testimonial marginalization and hermeneutical gaps.
Beyond their expressive potential, comics operate as sociological artifacts within various domains: autobiographical comics that explore classed, racialized or gendered identities; community-based participatory comics used in youth work and citizenship education; graphic ethnographies that document lived experience; memory-work comics addressing migration, conflict or intergenerational trauma; as well as fields such as graphic medicine, which exemplify how visual storytelling can redistribute epistemic authority and foreground experiential knowledge (Moretti, Della Puppa 2025).
This panel invites interdisciplinary contributions investigating comics as critical mediators of educational experience, tools of visual and participatory sociology, and semiotic forms that unsettle established pedagogical paradigms. Papers may focus on inequalities, recognition, multimodal literacies, counter-narratives, or the sociological reconfiguration of educational justice. The aim is to explore how “thinking in comics” expands the sociological imagination and supports more equitable and reflexive educational environments.