Sherryl Vint and Lorenzo Servitje of UC Riverside are proposing an edited volume for the graphic medicine book series from Penn State University Press, and are looking for papers. This interdisciplinary call for papers invites proposals for an edited volume on zombies in comics and graphic novels through the lens of medical discourse. Like many tropes in science fiction, the zombie crosses discursive boundaries to become a metaphor used in clinical and scientific literature. For example, it becomes a figurative mediation for patients who experience “zombification” and the “dehumanizing” effects of illness and/or medical treatment, such as the numbing affect… Read More
Call for Papers: Medical Imaging II: Medical Narratives in Late Modern Popular Culture (September 11th/12th 2014, Ulm University, Germany)
In recent decades, Popular Culture has increasingly become the engine of social and cultural change. It also takes constitutive influence on the design of individual life concepts. Not least, popular culture is one of the most successful global culture industries. Thus, it is a representative culture with fundamental socio-political significance (see Kleiner 2012: 17). Popular Culture in its present form has emerged since the 1950 and can be understood as a social substructure which industrially produces diverse knowledge and concepts of knowledge as offers of information and entertainment. Popular Culture can be simultaneously understood as a way of communication, as… Read More
Graphic Medicine at ASBH
The theme of this year’s annual meeting of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities was “Tradition, Innovation, and Moral Courage.” The meeting was held October 24-27 in Atlanta, GA. (Photos by Michael Green.) From the abstract for the panel “Graphic Medicine @ Work: Outcomes When the Intervention is a Comic” : The last several years have seen a rise in graphic novels depicting medical experiences and graphic stories used for patient education purposes. A handful of preliminary studies suggest that the use of illustrations on health instructions increase patient engagement with and recollection of the information presented. Three studies further… Read More
CFP: Special Issue of Configurations on Graphic Medicine
Due to production changes, the deadline for the Special Issue on Graphic Medicine of Configurations, the Journal of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts, has been moved up to January 15, 2014. Submissions, in the form of essays, comics, and any combination of the two, as well as any questions, should be sent to Susan Squier, sxs62@psu.edu. Any submission should include 2-3 sentences of biographical information, your name, email address, and hard mail address.
Graphic Medicine Conference Recommends…
Paul Gravett, somewhat jokingly, asked in his keynote in Brighton this AM: “Do we risk a Graphic Medicine comic boom like the zombie boom?” Hadn’t considered it, but sure hope not! Nevertheless, these titles arise from Paul’s keynote this AM, and from the informed and invigorated audience, here are some recent GM titles to be explored: Calling Nurse Abbott Annie Sullivan & The Trials of Helen Keller by Joseph Lambert – just won an Eisner award! The Ticking Boy by Damon Herd Admission by Neill Cameron in Off Life magazine (starts on pg. 24 but other great stuff in… Read More
CFP: Transitions 4, Birkbeck, UoL.
from Nina Mickwitz: Dear comics scholars, this is to inform you all that the date for Transitions 4 – New directions in Comics Studies has been moved forward by a week, with a reminder that our call for papers is open until the end of July. Transitions will now take place on Saturday the 26th of October 2013, at Birkbeck, University of London, London WC1E 7HX We are pleased to announce that Dr Ann Miller (University of Leicester, joint editor of European Comic Art) will be giving the keynote, and that Dr Roger Sabin (Central St. Martins, University of the… Read More
Save the Date!
The conference organizing committee, in conjunction with Muna al-Jawad and an enthusiastic team in Brighton would like to officially announce the preliminary details of our 2013 Comics & Medicine conference! Ethics Under Cover: Comics, Medicine and Society 4th International Conference of Comics and Medicine 5th-7th July 2013, Brighton and Sussex Medical School, UK CALL FOR PAPERS HERE!
Comics on the Brain
Via a retweet by Matt Madden of Drawing Words and Writing Pictures, a researcher at Tufts looking at how (and where) our brains assemble the visual language of comics. The article in Discover article, titled, “The Brain, The Charlie Brown Effect” looks closely at sequential art with and without narrative significance. “People are able to predict what’s coming next,” Cohn says, “even if there’s no meaning to it.” The study the article is citing (full PDF courtesy of the author) is available on researcher Neil Cohn’s website. Also an earlier article (pdf full text via author’s website) where Cohen takes on Scott McCloud’s… Read More
Comics and Trauma
Another story on the trauma comic, this one by National Public Radio in which the entirety of the comic can be downloaded, is available here. I love NPR, but unfortunately, based on the headline, they have not read this great piece by Dylan Meconis on how NOT to write about comics.
Graphic Pharmacy
Via friend of Graphic Medicine Paula Knight, a graphic study of the perceived minds of community pharmacists while working. Error Girl, aka Hannah Family, is a third year PhD student at the University of Bath. Her research team is looking into the relationship between mental workload and medication dispensing errors. As part of their study, they are asking community pharmacists to fill out this blank brain template as a means of self-reporting what is on the pharmacist’s mind whilst working on filling scripts. This is another fascinating medical project utilizing knowing-through-drawing. I would love to see this kind of research… Read More