When Women Were Dragons
Associated Subjects:
The penultimate book studied in Scholars’ Seminar: Competing Identities this year was Kelly Barnhill’s When Women Were Dragons.
For this assignment, Dean Collier gave students an option to write their regular weekly analytical response or to create an image capturing what it would look like if dragons lived among us.
The assignment gave students an opportunity to exercise their creativity while still engaging deeply with the text. Gwyneth Street and Ivy Waters decided to try their “hand” at the completing the assignment, and Lily Carlson experimented with Nano Banana to see how realistic she could get her vision.
Dean Collier was very impressed by the students’ artistry and imaginativeness, and their keen exploration of the themes in the text. Enjoy!
Lily describes her creation as such:
I made sure to include that the dragons needed to still have some female clothing aspects in order to make it still obvious that they were once human. I also had Alex shushing Beatrice in the forefront in order to convey the possibility that the silence surrounding the dragoning was something taught, not something innate. Everyone in the image is oblivious to what is going on around them, and it is in a 1950s setting. The dragons are not necessarily trying to harm anything in this scene, but their presence seems too difficult to ignore in a world where everyone must act completely oblivious.
There were a lot of tweaks in the process to get this to look exactly as I wanted it to, but my favorite part is how unassuming/nonchalant the dragons seem even with their immense power.
Of her drawing, Ivy says:
I added some details to the picture to represent how dragons and humans would hypothetically live in harmony. On the back of the pillow there is a tag that says DF Co. which stands for Dragon Furniture company. I figured that if dragons were to enter the world, companies would have to adapt and make things to capitalize on dragons’ needs because normal human chairs would obviously be very uncomfortable for them. There is also an enlarged cup and food for the same reason. The dragon is wearing a hat to personify her, and represent how she is civilized, and show her connection to humans. I made the family equal part dragon and human with the children, and the mothers, to show the equality among humans and dragons. I also added tiny flowers and grass to symbolize the growth of the world after the acceptance of dragoning.
**The featured image for this post was drawn by Gwyneth Streett. The image depicts a kitchen scene with a dragon mother making tea with her human daughter in a person-sized house.