[Re]Framing Graphic Medicine: Comics & The History of Medicine

(KNOW 37015)

University of Chicago, Institute on the Formation of Knowledge

5737 S University Ave, Classroom 104

Spring 2022 – Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:00-3:20 pm

Course Directors:

Brian Callender, MD
[email protected]
Office hours by appointment

MK Czerwiec, RN, MA
[email protected]
Office hours by appointment

Our booklist on Bookshop

Course resources and important details

Course Objectives:

By the end of the course, we intend for students to:

Understand basic concepts and practices of the comics medium, including its history
Understand what the history of comics contributes to the history of medicine
Examine the use of comics to convey ideas and formulate knowledge about health, health care, the body, illness, caregiving, and disability
Focus on the elements and process of making comics as applied to the goals and applications of graphic medicine and the health humanities

Week 1: Introduction to Graphic Medicine and Comics – COURSE OUTLINE

○ Class 1 (March 29)

Readings: “Welcome to the Graphic Medicine Manifesto.” Graphic Medicine Manifesto. Czerwiec, MK et al. Available electronically through the library here

Del Rey Cabero, E, M Goodrum, and JM Mellado. How to Study Comics & Graphic Novels: A Graphic Introduction to Comics Studies. Oxford Comics Network, 2021.

Also poke around on this website, a discussion of the 2019 exhibit “Drawing Blood”

○ Class 2 (March 31)

Readings: Please come to class prepared to share reflections on/drawings from the following:

- - Comics Basics with MK
  - Cartooning basics: Drawing vs. cartooning with Marek Bennet
  - What is a Graphic Novel?

Week 2: The Experience of Illness

○ Class 3 (April 5) Coma by Zara Slattery

Readings: Slattery, Zara. Coma. Myriad Editions, 2021.

- Available on reserve at the Regenstein Library
- Slattery, Zara et al. Coma – in conversation with Zara Slattery. Brighton and Sussex Medical School, 2021.
- Slattery, Zara. Drawing Delirium: Understanding Trauma Through Storytelling. TedX Goodenough College, 2021.

Discussion: What is phenomenology?

- Key features of embodiment
- Key features of illness
- What is the illness experience?
- Illness-Disease-Sickness triad
- Why comics as a medium to express and understand the illness experience

○ Class 4 (April 7) Comics, Faces, and Stories

Prep:

Come to class prepared to share reflections on and drawings from the following exercises:

And readings:

In-class activities will be based on these readings:
- The Five Choices in making a comic
- Story Structure Sentences from Out on the Wire by Jessica Abel
- FAST comic panels by Marek Bennett (Faces, Action, Setting, Text)

Class 4 Slides

Week 3: Disability

○ Class 5 (April 12) The Body Factory – with guest speaker Dr. Ann Fox.

Required readings:

Chochois, H. The Body Factory: From the First Prosthetics to the Augmented Human. Graphic Mundi, 2021.
Berne, P et al. Ten Principles of Disability Justice. WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly 2018; 46: 227-230.
Sandahl, C. It’s All the Same Movie: Making Code of the Freaks. JCMS: Journal of Cinema and Media Studies 2019; 58(4): 145-50.
Garland-Thomson, R. Becoming Disabled. The New York Times: August 19, 2016.
Lehrer, R. Where All Bodies Are Exquisite. The New York Times: August 9, 2017.

Mentioned in class discussion:

Dr. Fox’s slides
Golem Girl, Riva Lehrer
Good Kings, Bad Kings, Susan Nussbaum
“Judgement Call” Sharon Rosenzewig
“From Truth, With Truth” Lawrence Lyndell
Six Ways of Looking at Crip Time Ellen Samuels
Reflections on the Boom of Graphic Pathography: The Effects and Affects of Narrating Disability and Illness in Comics, Gesine Wegner

Supplemental Readings:

Bell, C. El Deafo. Abrams, 2020.
- Chapter 1 & 2
Webber, G. Dumb: Living without a Voice. Fantagraphics, 2018.
- Excerpt, p38-66
Cole, E. Little Brain: A Concussion Journey. 2016.
- Available here
Cole, E. Little Brain: Eighteen Months.
- Available here
DePoy, E and SF Gilson. Disability in the 20th and 21st Centuries: Medical Condition, Construction, or Commodity. In Studying Disability: Multiple Theories and Responses. SAGE Publications, 2011.

Class 6 (April 14) In-class activity:

Body Maps – from Keywords in Graphic Medicine (draft, do not share or reproduce) by Ebru Ustandag and MK Czerwiec

Week 4: Mental Health

○ Class 7 (April 19) Zines Workshop

Preparation:

○ Class 8 (April 21)

Parakeet
Chapter 12, Medicine, A Graphic History
Crafting Psychiatric Contention Through Single Panel Cartoons

Week 5: Reproductive Health

○ Class 9: (April 26) Kid Gloves – discussion

○ Class 10 (April 28) Patient Education Comics Workshop

Readings:
- Ashwal, G and A Thomas. Are Comic Books Appropriate Health Education Formats to Offer Adult Patients? AMA Journal of Ethics 2018; 20(2): 134-140.
- Look at three sites for educational comic examples. As you look at these, consider what specific elements contribute to the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a health-related educational comic.
  - The COVID comics on the graphic medicine site,
  - Cathy Leamy’s medical comics here, and
  - Alex Thomas’s medical comics here.
  - Center for Cartoon Studies. Health and Wealth: A Graphic Guide to the US Healthcare System. 2021.

Week 6: Patient Activism and Advocacy

○ Class 11 (May 3) guest speaker: Omar Mirza, creator of CL Psychiatrist

Also read: Mirza, O. Exclusion of BIPOC from VIP floors in an academic medical center. KevinMD.com. July 21, 2021.

Supplemental Materials:
- Brian’s Slides

Supplemental Readings:
- Brand, A et al. Patient-Informed Consent. Annals of Internal Medicine 2019; 170; W90-W106.
- Kearns, C and N Kearns. The role of comics in public health communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Visual Communication in Medicine 2020; 43: 139-149.
- McNicol, A. Humanising illness: presenting health information in educational comics. Medical Humanities 2014; 40: 49-55
- Farinella, M. Science Comics’ Super Powers. American Scientist 2018; 106(4): 218-221
- Black Mothers Face Far Worse Health Outcomes. How Do We Fix It? Whit Taylor
- Medicine’s Women Problem, Aubrey Hirsch
- My Life with a Preexisting Condition, Nomi Kane
- Climate Changes Health, Mita Mahato
- Mapping the use of comics in health education, a scoping review.
- Feasibility of Using a Comic for Education in the Emergency Room
- HIV Disclosure Comics (podcast episode)
- Graphic Medicine & Public Health, Meredith Li-Vollmer
- Dobbins, S. Comics in public health: the sociocultural and cognitive influence of narrative on health behaviours. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 2016; 7(1): 35-52.
- Booster Shot Comics
- This comic that illustrates this research study. (You don’t need to really read the whole study, just observe the example of a research study adapted into comic form.)
- Teaching Confidentiality through Comics at one Spanish Medical School
- Comics with Problems website
  - *** Warning: Content on this website contains materials of a historical nature that contain caricatures, stereotypes, and behaviors that viewers may find offensive and insensitive. ***

Farinella, M. The Potential of Comics in Science Communication. Journal of Science Communication 2018; 17(1).

○ Class 12 (May 5) guest speaker: Kay Sohini on her thesis as activism and research in comics.

Added: Teaching Artfully: Kay’s graphic interview with Meghan Parker, INKS Journal, May 2022

Week 7: History of Comics and the Visual Culture of Medicine

○ Class 13 (May 10) – Exhibition Visit and drawing exercise

Readings:

- Hogarth, W. The Harlot’s Progress. 1730 – elaboration on some of the details in the images
- Cruikshank, G. The Bachelor’s Own Book: The Progress of Mr. Lambkin, (gent) in the Pursuit of Pleasure and Amusement, and also in Search of Health and Happiness. 1844
- Mayhew, H and G. Cruikshank. The Toothache. 1848
- Onwhyn, T. Pleasures of the water cure / by a patient who has been well drench’d and wrench’d and restored to health. 1857?
- Three Nurses 22 (Charlton). 1964.
- The Young Doctors 4 (Charlton). 1963.

○ Class 14 (May 12) – Special collections classroom. Viewing & drawing more from the archive.

In class exercise: Drawings based on updating a piece from the exhibit that speaks to you

Also, you may find this lecture helpful in planning your final project work: Adapting text to comics

Week 8: Pandemics

○ Class 15 (May 17): Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371

Required Readings:
- Czerwiec, MK. Taking Turns: Stories from HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371. Penn State Press, 2017.
  - Available electronically through the library here.
  - Please come to class prepared with questions about the text, and to do a close reading exercise based on the text.
  - New introduction to Taking Turns, 2021 edition from Graphic Mundi
  - Comic of new intro excerpt
  - Representing AIDS in Comics, AMA Journal of Ethics, 02/18

Supplemental readings:
- - Voices from the Taking Turns oral history project
  - Drawing Taking Turns
  - Editing Taking Turns
  - AIDS, Posters, and Stories of Public Health, NIH website exhibit
  - Chapter 4: The Great Plagues, Medicine, A Graphic History
  - The Top 10 Most Deadly Epidemics & Conflicts, The Nib Death Issue
  - Epidemic by Niki Smith

○ Class 16 (May 19): COVID-19 comics

Readings:

- Callender, B, S Obuobi, MK Czerwiec, and I Williams. COVID-19, comics, and the visual culture of contagion. The Lancet 2020; 396: 1061-1063.
- Saji, S, S Venkatesan, and B Callender. Comics in the time of Pan(dem)ic: COVID-19, graphic medicine, and metaphors. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 2021; 64: 136-154
- In/Vulnerable: Inequity in the time of pandemic
- Viruses vs. Everyone
- Comics in the time of COVID-19 – watch the one minute video, then scroll down and check out their three outputs: database, best practice guidelines, and final report.
- COVID-19 comics @ Graphic Medicine – choose one comic not called out above and be prepared to discuss it in detail in class.

Supplemental Readings:

- Boileau, K and R Johnson. The COVID Chronicles: A Comics Anthology. Graphic Mundi, 2021. Available here. Excerpt: Quarantine Week 10, Jason Chatfield’s COVID-19 diary.

Week 9: End of life, Dying and Death

○ Class 17 (May 24)

Readings:
- Can’t We Talk About Something More Pleasant, Roz Chast
- Introduction to Advance Directives
- Advance Care Planning: What Should I Know?

○ Class 18 (May 26)

Review – Pulling it all together
Syllabus outline
Our course drawing warmup prompts by date
Class Summary slides

TOP STUDENT TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS COURSE:

This course was supported by the University of Chicago Bucksbaum Institute for Clinical Excellence