Graphic Medicine: Visualizing the Stigma of Illness

17th November 2011

This one-day interdisciplinary conference aims to explore medical narrative in graphic novels and comics with an emphasis on the stigma of illness, disease or disability, both physical and mental. A sub-genre of graphic narrative known as graphic medicine is emerging as a field of interest to both scholars and creators of comics, and members of the healthcare professions are beginning to turn to comics as a source of illness narratives and documents of the patient and carer experience.

We invite proposals for scholarly papers (20 minutes) or panel discussions (60 minutes), focused on medicine and comics in any form (e.g. graphic novels, comic strips, graphic pathographies, manga, and/or web comics) on the following—and related—topics:

• notions of stigma in graphic pathographies of illness and disability
  
• the use of comics to explain, highlight and eradicate stigma
  
• the use of comics in patient care
  
• the interface of graphic medicine and other visual arts in popular culture
  
• ethical implications of patient representation in comics by healthcare providers 
  
• trends in international use of comics in healthcare settings
  
• the role of comics in provider/patient communication
  
• comics as a virtual support group for patients and caregivers
  
• the use of comics in bioethics discussions and education
  

Contributions are sought from humanities scholars, comics scholars, healthcare professionals, comics enthusiasts, writers and cartoonists.

300 word proposals for a 20 minute paper should be submitted by 18/07/2011 to submissions@graphicmedicine.org and notice of acceptance or rejection may be expected by 1/8/2011

Abstracts may be in Word, WordPerfect, or RTF formats, following this order:
author(s), affiliation, email address, title of abstract, body of abstract
All proposals submitted will receive and acknowledgement.
Abstracts will be blind peer reviewed.

Drs. Columba Quigley, Maria Vaccarella and Ian Williams