Book review by Kevin Wolf What if you were on the steep downward slope of life and were given the chance that you could live a lot longer than any actuarial life expectancy—perhaps to age 200—would you go through a risky experiment for such a long life? Personal ambition, quality/quantity of life desires, and experimental post-mortem ethical quandaries abound in the graphic science-fiction work by Ezra Clayton Daniels called Upgrade Soul (US). US could be a metaphor for humans struggling with their mortality, but it’s so much more. This is a wonderful, haunting tale presented from many perspectives: a brilliant… Read More
Call for papers – Enabling and Disability Comics for/about Young People: Within the Panels and Without. Amiens, 5th June 2020
From Lisa El Refaie: In 2020, Amiens will be the European Youth Capital (Amiens for Youth). On that occasion and for the year of Comics, the University of Picardy is organizing, in association with the universities of Artois, Lille and Brighton, and with the association “On a marché sur la bulle” a three-day interdisciplinary conference on “Comics and Youth” on 3rd, 4th and 5th June 2020. The research group CORPUS (Conflict, Representation and Dialogue in the English-speaking World, EA 4295) of the University of Picardy is planning an international study day on the representation of disability in comics about and/or… Read More
This Week in Graphic Medicine (9/13/2019)
‘This Week in Graphic Medicine’ highlights news about comics in medicine published during the week (Saturday – Friday). Links are typically presented without commentary, unless clarification of relevance is necessary. So without further ado… Matthew’s Pick of the Week… This week, I want to encourage you to follow along with the dotMD festival happening over the weekend in Galway, Ireland! Both Ian and MK (among many other familiar faces!) are in attendance, speaking, and taking part in a Graphic Medicine Exhibition curated by Ian! dotMD on Twitter and the 2019 hashtag (for Twitter and Instagram both) are great ways to… Read More
This Week in Graphic Medicine (2/23/18)
‘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… Matthew’s Pick of the Week… This week I want to keep it short and sweet by highlighting Just Peachy Comics – a webcomic I just discovered this week on Facebook thanks to a friend’s share. Holly describes her comics as a way to journal as her therapist suggested – lucky for us, the… Read More
CALL FOR PAPERS Disability and Superheroes
We invite abstracts for essays to be published in a collection showcasing new work on the representation and conceptualization of disability in superhero comics. We encourage examinations of mainstream titles and characters (such as those published by Marvel and DC) as well as considerations of other texts that engage disability and the superhero genre in creative ways (such as Cece Bell’s El Deafo). We are especially interested in contributions that explore additional intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender. The collection envisions a diverse selection of contributors (scholars from the humanities, comics studies, and disability studies; disability activists; comics creators; medical… Read More
The Ring of Fire Anthology
Chili Story
Video performance illustrated by comics about an allergic reaction. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex9r5LFF0yw#t=14 Discovered via the Sins Invalid website, where other comic-illustrated videos can be found.
New Podcast: Comics & Producing Identity
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 & Caregiving
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. Our eleventh panel from Toronto and they just keep getting better and better! I, MK, had the honor of moderating this panel and am quite pleased to revisit and post it here. The first speaker is Michelle N. Huang, a Master’s Student and University Graduate Fellow at The Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include disability studies, war literature, and cultural studies in the twentieth century. She writes of her paper, The “Good Enough Daughter”… Read More
New Podcast: Representing Mental Health
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. In this week’s episode, three speakers address mental health and comics. First up is An Nguyen with her paper, My Partner Has Depression: Japanese depictions of illness experiences in the day to day. An Nguyen is a Ph.D. candidate in sociocultural anthropology at the University of Western Ontario. She is currently finishing her dissertation on Japanese youth street fashion subcultures and has an interest in the global flow of media and things and their interpretation across cultures. Describing… Read More