In this fifth podcast episode from our Ireland Conference, Christopher Dwyer speaks with Ryan Montoya, a physician and professional comic book artist. In this wide-ranging conversation, Ryan & Christopher discuss the origin story for Ryan’s unique career path, his perspective on challenges to providing compassionate care, his forthcoming graphic medicine project, and their thoughts on many topics. A very fun listen. Enjoy! Our podcast host, Christopher Dwyer, is a psychology researcher who specializes in the fields of cognition and education, with international expertise in the field of Critical Thinking. He is the author of the book Critical Thinking: Historical Perspectives… Read More
New Podcast from Ireland: Cara Bean
In this third podcast episode from our Ireland Conference, Christopher Dwyer speaks with Cara Bean Cara and Chris discuss her book here I am, I am me, mental health and art, and Cara’s workshop at the conference. Learn more about Cara’s work on her website. Cara will be hosting a Drawing Together in January based on her Ireland workshop. Don’t miss it! Our podcast host, Christopher Dwyer, is a psychology researcher who specializes in the fields of cognition and education, with international expertise in the field of Critical Thinking. He is the author of the book Critical Thinking: Historical… Read More
New This Week
New discount! Our Bookshop.org affiliate commission has been upgraded to 15% for all of June! Check out any of our specially curated lists, or focus on our LGBTQ+ lists for Pride Month! Speaking of queer comics, the documentary NO STRAIGHT LINES is streaming for free on PBS from June 1-30 in celebration of this year’s Pride Month. 2017 Graphic Medicine keynote Rupert Kinnard is featured in the film as well as many others. From the PBS website, “When Alison Bechdel received a coveted MacArthur Award for her best-selling graphic memoir Fun Home, it heralded the acceptance of LGBTQ+ comics in American… Read More
A Journey to Motherhood by Camille Aubry – Chapter 6
Graphic Medicine is very proud to present the sixth chapter of Camille Aubry’s A Journey to Motherhood. This is a comic book diary depicting the fun and less-fun bits of maternity, from pregnancy to the toddler years, told with dry, and at times caustic, humour. Read Chapter 5 here. Next installment will be posted on the 16th of March. Visit Camille’s website. Follow Camille on Instagram. Camille Aubry is a French graphic artist based in Bristol. She graduated as an architect in Paris before completing an MA in Illustration at Camberwell College of Arts. Camille works as a live illustrator (scribe), documenting… Read More
Graphic Pharmacy
Guest post by Giang Ho Pharmacy is a dreadful job. Who can really stand for 8-12 hours straight verifying prescriptions, dealing with medical insurance, with mean customers, having no bathroom or lunch break, working overtime then coming back the next day to repeat it all again? To many people, being a pharmacist means you must be amazing or just insane. When I started pharmacy school, I thought the same thing. But after three years in this field, I would say pharmacy is a very interesting and unique profession that is vastly misunderstood. I hope my comics work about pharmacy school can show what it is… Read More
Primary Care as Adventure! By Richard Stark, MD.
Primary Care as Adventure! – guest blog by Richard Stark, MD. The rumors you’ve heard that Primary Care is boring and repetitious are not true! Primary Care is an adventure, and I’ve accumulated the stories and anecdotes over 40 years in medicine to prove it! Yes, you see the same patients year after year, in sickness and in health. But you learn a lot about people and their behavior. You also learn a lot about the attitudes and concerns of staff. And if you attain an administrative position in a bureaucratic healthcare organization you gain an appreciation of a… Read More
“It’s Probably Bullshit.” – Paramedic Adventures by Phoebe Cohen.
There is a small prayer that an EMS provider says whenever he is dispatched out to a particularly frightening call. “It’s probably bullshit.” It’s said with an expression of annoyance but is usually uttered to cover up a deeper feeling of unease. “Paramedic twelve, please respond to unconscious infant,” “Please respond to difficulty breathing, inhaler not working,” “Please respond to actively seizing toddler.” “Please respond to motor vehicle crash with unresponsive individual in driver’s seat.” Hearing all these calls it is easy for the new medic to feel panic. Even the older medics hate responding to the “shitstorms” or the… Read More
The Gag Reflex: Representations of Medicine in New Yorker Cartoons
In this entertaining, reflective, and insightful talk from his workshop at the 2105 Comics & Medicine conference, doctor and New Yorker staff cartoonist Ben Schwartz tracks the history of doctors, medicine, and health as reflected in the single-panel gag cartoons of the New Yorker Magazine. He also shares reflections from a few fellow New Yorker cartoonists on medicine in comics, and tips for making a gag comic of your own. Keep an eye on your screen, there are over 200 comics in this presentation! If your browser supports Quicktime, you can watch it in the first window below. If it… Read More
The Human Microbiome: Megan Diddie interviews Dr. Eugene B. Chang
Special guest blog by Megan Diddie Megan Diddie is an artist working in Chicago. Her work centers around the human body and its’ relationship to the environment. This past year I started having numerous conversations with a dear friend about the human microbiome. She was in the process of rebuilding her gut flora and fauna through a change in diet. One of things that fascinated me about my friend’s process was thinking about the body in this more fluid state and how interconnected it is with the world – the things we eat, the air we breath, the bodies we touch, and then where those things… Read More
Image + Text – a new series
Take a look at this article on Somatosphere By Juliet McMullin and Stacy Leigh Pigg The Somatosphere blog series, Image + Text, seeks to engage the potentiality of graphic narratives as they contribute and transform ways of seeing, and engage the landscape of graphic illness narratives. Posts will include book reviews and a series of essays that seek to create a critical dialog for a “graphic medical anthropology” (Hamdy 2014). While the conversation will be centered on the potential of comics in science, medicine, and anthropology, the editors want to examine the edges of that conversation by attending to ethnographic and illness narrative work that include image… Read More