This panel from Toronto, “Comics and Rhetoric,” features Brandon Strubberg, Tim Elliot, and Matt Kaske Cirigliano.
Brandon Strubberg and Tim Elliott are second-year PhD students in Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University. Brandon’s Master’s thesis focused on rhetorical representations of diabetic identity, and he has presented on the topic in the past. His current research projects include examining the interactions between identities of disease and technology as well as the usability of medical manuals. Tim has presented a number of papers on superhero comics and popular culture, mostly recently on a panel titled “Giant Sized Introductions: Using X-Men Relaunches as a Vehicle for Introducing Students to the Superhero Comic,” presented at the Rocky Mountain Conference on Graphic Novels. He remains interested in the possibilities for comic books as a medium for conveying complex information to mass audiences. Of their presentation, Humanizing Medicine Through Graphic Storytelling: A Rhetorical Analysis of Student-Created Graphic Narrative, they write,
“This oral presentation focuses on a rhetorical analysis of the comics produced in Dr. Green’s course, “Graphic Storytelling and Medical Narratives,” particularly those students’ comics that represent communicative interactions between themselves and the physicians they work with and learn from in clinical settings. After a brief literature review covering the comic medium’s adaptability to various rhetorical situations within medical discourse, we will present the results of a content analysis of 19 student-created comics. This analysis provides statistical evidence for communicative trends between senior medical students and their supervising physicians. We will close our discussion with several exemplar texts that elaborate on medical student agency during this initial period of clinical training.”
Brandon can be emailed at brandon.c.strubberg@ttu.edu, and Timothy at timothy.elliott@ttu.edu. They are working on a blog that will, as they describe it, “discuss graphic medicine in the context of rhetoric (medical rhetoric, scientific rhetoric, and public rhetoric) specifically.” Looking forward to linking to that blog ASAP!
Matt Kaske Cirigliano received a BA in Biomechanical Design from Gettysburg College and an MS in Biomedical Visualization from the University of Illinois, Chicago. He has received merit awards from the Association of Medical Illustrators and UIC, exhibited artwork internationally, and has worked in patient education at TheVisualMD and Understand.com. He writes of his presentation, Conquering cells: Promoting science and medicine through sequential art:
“The appeal of entertainment media begs to question whether it can be used as a supplement to classroom teachings, inspiring students to pursue scientific knowledge through narrative. To begin, one must understand the needs of the audience. Using Q-method analysis, five distinct temperaments were defined in a population of biology students, each with a distinct attitude towards reading an edutainment graphic novel parallel to their studies. These results offer tantalizing insight into how we can design graphic novels to cater to each of the five factors, making complex topics approachable through the familiar action, adventure, and narratives of sequential art.”
The video promo at the beginning of this presentation can be watched here. You can reach Matt by emailing cirina01@gmail.com and see more of his work at conquer.ncarts.net.
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