This early spring has been an amazing whirlwind of travel and speaking about Graphic Medicine and Taking Turns.
Queers & Comics Conference in San Francisco – I moderated the queer health and comics panel, had strong book sales, and did a signing. Many awesome queer creators, friends old and new, were in attendance. It was inspiring and enlightening to hear them describe their work. Special thanks to Justin Hall and Jennifer Camper for all their efforts to make this second conference as amazing as the first. Here’s a great article about the conference.
Ethics Grand Rounds, Illinois Masonic Medical Center, this short talk, panel discussion, and reception was a moving event as many people who had been at Illinois Masonic during the life of Unit 371, and many who were not, gathered to talk about the the Unit’s history, describe the AIDS crisis in Chicago, and bear witness to experiences in this special place. Thanks to ethicist and palliative care specialist Julie Goldstein for making this important event possible. For those of you who have read my book, you may recognize some of the lovely people below from their oral histories that were included.
Loyola Interdisciplinary Education workshop – This was a wonderful opportunity to conduct a full-day Graphic Medicine workshop with educators willing to be innovative and creative in their approach to teaching nurses, doctors, and allied health professionals.
Performance of Taking Turns at Duke – Regretfully, I wasn’t able to be in attendance, but thanks to social media I could at least have a peek into the amazing work the students in Dr. Jules Odendahl James’ class did in adapting my book to the stage.
George Washington Medical School in Washington, DC – Medical Humanities program director and beloved friend Linda Raphael welcomed me for a noon lecture to the entire community, a lecture to her psych clerkship, and lastly a lecture to her Literature, Medicine, and Public Health students.
In addition to these talks, I had the opportunity to visit the Washington Post building for a special event and visit the National Library of Medicine to research the history of AIDS comics.
Northwestern keynote: This was a great honor, to be asked to give the keynote at the first conference (of hopefully many to come) celebrating the work of the Center for Medical Humanities at Northwestern Medical School. Brian Morrison created this terrific poster using my artwork showing some of the presentations, and this article nicely summarizes the event.
Next up: the Toronto Comics Arts Festival!