Public health messages have gone from radio to television and now all the way to graphic novels. Join historian Soha Bayoumi to examine graphic medicine — a field at the crossroads of visual storytelling and healthcare. Learn how graphic medicine can help us understand and deal with disease and its impact on our lives.

Graphic Medicine is a relatively recent medical humanities field that sits at the intersection of the medium of comics and the discourse of medicine and healthcare. It includes visual pathographies – graphic narratives documenting patients’ and caregivers’ experiences of disease, autobiographies, zines, pamphlets and other forms of comics that approach the questions of health and illness from various angles. The COVID-19 pandemic and the amount of morbidity, loss of life and significant changes to ordinary life it has engendered has allowed for numerous narratives to emerge, including graphic narratives that address varying topics from the cathartic processing of the trauma caused by the loss of a loved one, to communicating information about hygiene and vaccines to a wide audience, to addressing issues such as the inequities exacerbated or accentuated by the pandemic. This lecture explores some of Graphic Medicine’s contributions to the ways in which we’re making sense of and communicating about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Thursday, 28 October, 6:30 PM IST | Tutorial: 8:00 PM IST

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