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This Week in Graphic Medicine (10/13/17 & 10/20/17)

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Note: This is a double-issue, as I was too sick last week to do much of anything. Other Note: Posts from Friday, 10/20/17 will be included in next week’s post. I will be at a conference that entire day!  ‘This Week in Graphic Medicine’ highlights relevant articles (and tweets) about comics in medicine published during the week (Saturday – Friday). Links are typically presented without commentary, unless clarification of relevance is necessary, with credit given to those who flagged them up where possible. So without further ado… Special Content… Our friend and colleague Brian Fies (Mom’s Cancer), and his family,… Read More

Mom’s Cancer

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  guest review by Northwestern Medical Student Samantha Estevez, Chicago, IL Cancer. It is a word that holds an incredible amount of power and immediately conveys a strong message to those who encounter it. We all know someone who has come face-to-face with this word: a relative, a friend, a coworker, or even you. To many, cancer is not just a word or a diagnosis, it is a death sentence. Whether that death is literal in that a person is unable to overcome the mutated cells overtaking their body or whether it is a figurative death of one’s life prior… Read More

New Podcast: Comics & Producing Identity

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Use the Quicktime player above to view images along with the audio. If you don’t have Quicktime, you can listen to the audio-only version below. This Toronto conference panel is moderated by Ian Williams. Managing difference through graphic cancer narratives, Juliet McMullin, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Riverside A common refrain in cancer disparities research states that while cancer mortality rates have dramatically decreased over the past decade, these gains have not accrued evenly across populations. Yet, there is little surprise in the findings of difference in cancer mortality rates. Cancer has always been about difference; difference in cells, in… Read More

New Podcast: Comics in Medical Practice

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Use the Quicktime player above to view images along with the audio. If you don’t have Quicktime, you can listen to the audio-only version below. On this panel from Toronto, we’ll hear four great speakers.  Unfortunately the audio starts slightly into Courtney’s presentation, but one can catch up quite quickly. First up is Courtney Donovan. Courtney is an assistant professor in the Department of Geography and Human Environmental Studies, San Francisco State University. Of her presentation, Visualizing Medical Data Through Graphic Novels, she writes, In more recent years, there has been a burgeoning interest in graphic novels exploring health and medical themes…. Read More

New Podcast Wednesday: Comics & AIDS

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Use the Quicktime player above to view images along with the audio. If you don’t have Quicktime, you can listen to the audio-only version below. This panel, moderated by Brian Fies, focuses on comics and AIDS. The first speaker is Ariela Freedman. She is an Associate Professor at the Liberal Arts College, Concordia University, Montreal. She writes on modernism, First World War narrative, and comics. She is the author of Death, Men and Modernism (Routledge: 2003) and many scholarly articles, and is currently working on a project on comics and representations of pain. Her paper, Picturing AIDS, “examines early strategies of picturing AIDS… Read More

A Conversation with Brian Fies

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Use the Quicktime player above to view images along with the audio. If you don’t have Quicktime, you can listen to the audio-only version below. The tales we tell are just as important as the facts and figures we learn. Stories help us try on different possibilities to see how they fit. They tell us where we came from and how we got here. They tell us what to appreciate, what to avoid, and what aspire to. The best stories pass on yesterday’s truths and take on new meanings for today.” -Brian Fies, in Whatever Happened to the World of… Read More

Comics & Parkinson's

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 In anticipation of this week’s upcoming podcast conversation with Mom’s Cancer creator Brian Fies, here’s news about a project Brian participated in to raise funds for Parkinson’s disease research. “Inspired by “Cul de Sac” comic strip creator Richard Thompson, Team Cul de Sac is an effort organized by Chris Sparks to raise funds for researching Parkinson’s Disease, which Richard has. Working with the Michael J. Fox Foundation, Team Cul de Sac had the idea of asking other cartoonists, illustrators, animators and artists to donate art for a book and auction. What kind of art? As the original announcement said: “The theme is… Read More

Graphic medicine: comics as medical narrative

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My article has been published online first In BMJ Medical Humanities Med Humanities doi:10.1136/medhum-2011-010093 click on the image above to access the article, but you’ll need a subscription or an Athens Login. Or you could email me. Ian