Brian Fies (Mom’s Cancer and Whatever Happened to the World of Tomorrow) is helping organize the third international conference on Comics & Medicine that will be held July 22-24 Toronto, Canada. Keynote presentations this year will be by comics creators Joyce Brabner (Our Cancer Year) and Joyce Farmer (Special Exits), as well as a talk by comics scholar and friend-of-the-conference Paul Gravett.
From Brian:
This event builds on two very successful conferences held in London in 2010 and Chicago in 2011, all organized by the same group. The idea of “graphic medicine” is that cartooning and healthcare have some interesting intersections and overlap that can benefit both: patients, caregivers and medical professionals telling their stories and using comics to communicate experiences and information in ways no other medium can. Think of work like Stitches, Epileptic, Psychiatric Tales, Cancer Made Me a Shallower Person, my book Mom’s Cancer, and many more.
Organizers have put out a Call for Papers and are looking for presenters on any of the following topics.
- Graphic pathographies of illness and disability
- The use of comics in medical education
- The use of comics in patient care
- Depictions of the illness experience from the perspective of loved ones and family caregivers
- The interface of graphic medicine and other visual arts in popular culture
- Ethical implications of using comics to educate the public
- 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 virtual support groups for patients and caregivers
- The use of comics in bioethics discussions and education
If you feel you have something to contribute, please it their blog for more information.