Graphic Medicine in the Academy

Susan SquierBethany Doane

Derek LeeJoshua Leone

Penn State University

Graphic Medicine graduate seminar

Rationale

• Why teach comics in the academy?– To catalyze engaged scholarly work.– To transcend disciplinary barriers.– To prepare students to be “critical discerning humane

participants in the future delivery of healthcare.” –Erin Gentry Lamb, April 6, 2014.

• How to sell comics to department administrators?– In two words: digital humanities– Oh, and students love learning about comics.

Syllabus: comics

Some of the comics we read• Brian Fies, Mom’s Cancer• Lynda Barry, excerpts from

One Hundred Demons• David Small, Stitches• Ellen Forney, Marbles• Marjane Satrapi,

Embroideries• Joyce Farmer, Special Exits

Sarah Leavitt, Tangles

Syllabus: graphic medicine and comics theory

• Charles Hatfield, Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature, 2005.

• Green and Myers, “Graphic Medicine: The Use of Comics in Medical Education and Patient Care,” BMJ 13 March 2010.

• Daniel Worden, “The Shameful Art: McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Comics, and the Politics of Affect”

• Ian Williams, “Graphic medicine: comics as medical narrative” Medical Humanities (2012)

• Kai Mikkonen, “Presenting Minds in Graphic Narratives” (2008)

Visitors Ian Williams and MK CzerwiecWebmasters of http://www.graphicmedicine.org

Ian Williams is the author most recently of Bad Doctor, and Czerwiec, whose comic “Harry” will appear in the Graphic Medicine special issue of Configurations: Journal of Literature, Science, and the Arts, is at work on her first graphic novel, Taking Turns: A Careography.

Williams and Czerwiec visited for one three hour seminar. They talked with the students about their own work creating and teaching comics and responding to studio work.

Visitors

Joyce Farmer, one of the original feminist cartoonists of the 1960s. An underground cartoonist from Laguna Beach, California, Farmer is the author of Tits n’ Clits Comix, Pandora’s Box,Abortion Eve, and most recently Special Exits.

Studio time—the middle hour

We all made comics—even me.

Bethany Doane, “Pushing Back”

Derek Lee, “The Adventures of Superdad”

Joshua Leone“Psychological injuries are invisible”