Picturing Illness: History, Poetics, and Graphic Medicine

Authors

  • Raghavi Ravi Kasthuri National Institute of Technology Trichy
  • Sathyaraj Venkatesan

Keywords:

Graphic medicine, Graphic pathographies, Illness, Underground comics

Abstract

Comics have often been treated as a juvenile and sub-literary art form; however, taking cues from the new-found cultural acceptance of comics, particularly with the publication of Art Spiegelman's Maus (1986), Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth (2000), and Alison Bechdel's Fun Home: A Family Tragedy (2006), there have emerged, over the past decade, a new breed of comics dealing with the patient/caregivers' experiences, perspectives and identities. Christened as graphic medicine, these illness narratives use comics as a medium to address wide ranging disease/illness related issues. The present review examines the following issues: What is graphic medicine? Is there a tangible relationship between underground comics and graphic medicine? If so, can we regard underground comics as historical precedent to graphic medicine? What are the uses of comics in medicine? Broadly put, drawing examples from various graphic medical narratives, the paper seeks to trace the history and poetics of graphic medicine.

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Author Biography

Raghavi Ravi Kasthuri, National Institute of Technology Trichy

Research Scholar Department of Humanities National Institute of Technology Trichy

References

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Compassion and Kindness

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Published

2015-09-25

How to Cite

Kasthuri, R. R., & Venkatesan, S. (2015). Picturing Illness: History, Poetics, and Graphic Medicine. Research and Humanities in Medical Education, 2, 11–17. Retrieved from https://www.rhime.in/ojs/index.php/rhime/article/view/9

Issue

Vol. 2 (2015)

Section

Review

License

Copyright (c) 2015 Raghavi Ravi Kasthuri, Sathyaraj Venkatesan

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