In this episode, we feature Jordana Greenblatt’s presentation from the 2015 Comics & Medicine conference, titled “Internal and External Spaces of Threat and Dissolution: HIV/AIDS Graphic Memoir.” This presentation was part of the “Comics as Performance” panel in Riverside. We will be hearing much more in the coming year about comics as performance as our 2016 Dundee conference theme expands on this area of thought and scholarship. In addition to the video below, you can subscribe to the Graphic Medicine podcast in iTunes here. And in our “What Are You Reading?!” segment, Tangles creator Sarah Leavitt talks with MK about… Read More
Tangles: Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me
guest review by Nathan Sethu Tangles, A Story about Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me is a graphic memoir created by Sarah Leavitt who writes both prose and comics. Her writing has appeared in Geist, The Globe and Mail, Vancouver Review, The Georgia Straight and Xtra West. Tangles is her first book and published by Skyhorse Publishing, Canada and printed in China. The Memoir published in 2012 was widely appreciated by media and Alzheimer associations of different countries. The New York Times has described the book as, “A poignant account…. Illustrations bring home the daughter’s pain as her once vibrant, protective… Read More
New Podcast: Transformations: Therapy/Not Therapy
Panel 2C from the 2013 Comics & Medicine panel in Brighton brings us four presentations that relate to the theme of therapy. Use the Quicktime player below to view images along with the audio of Panel 2B. If you don’t have Quicktime, you can listen to an audio-only version of the keynote presentation below. First up on this panel is Sarah Lightman (author of the forthcoming Book of Sarah from Myriad Editions) of the University of Glasgow and Laydeez do Comics with her talk, “Metamorphosing Difficulties – Post Traumatic Growth in the Autobiographical Comics of Sarah Leavitt, Nicola Streeten and Maureen… 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
Joyce Farmer: sex, politics and aging parents
Outside the world of underground comix enthusiasts, Joyce Farmer is probably best known for her latest work, Special Exits (Fantagraphics 2010), a memoir (though the names are changed) of her experience caring for her parents during the last few years of their lives. Special Exits is Farmer’s first book-length comic, famously praised by Robert Crumb, but Farmer has been an important figure in comics since the 1970s. I’ll get back to Special Exits in a minute, but first I want to make sure to tell you about her work from the 70s. I wish I’d been more familiar with it… Read More
New Podcast Wednesday (kind of)
This week’s Graphic Medicine podcast is actually a Laydeez do Comics podcast! Alex Fitch presents Comic Nurse (that’s me) and Sarah Leavitt at Laydeez in London, recorded on November of 2011. (above: The Graphic Medicine section of Blackwell’s Wellcome Collection bookshop, London. Tangles by Sarah Leavitt is on the right and two of my books are on the left. The center book, Billy, Me, & You is by Laydeez organizer Nicola Streeten. ) Visuals for the comics I discuss can be found by digging around here. “Taking Turns,” my book in progress, can be found here. Sarah Leavitt’s website is here, which… Read More
Sarah Leavitt on Tangles: Documenting a family’s struggle with alzheimer’s disease through comics
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 a panel moderated by Maria Vacarella, Vancouver writer and cartoonist Sarah Leavitt delivers her talk, “Documenting a Family’s Struggles with Alzheimer’s Disease: Using Comics to Break Through Stigma and Silence.” Sarah discusses three areas of stigma explored through comics in her book Tangles – anger and bad behavior, bodily functions, and sexuality. Her talk is followed by excerpts from the panel Q&A .