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Graphic Medicine

A starting point for learning about graphic medicine, focusing on the use of comics as a medium for communicating stories about medicine and the experience of illness.

Introduction

The collection of books and other resources in this guide is intended as a starting point for those interested in learning about graphic medicine and includes some sample works. It is in no way comprehensive since the field is ever growing and evolving.

Additional resources not necessarily limited to NU:

  • Comic Nurse / MK Czerwiec
  • Databases for Comic Art Research in: LibGuide- African Comics, Graphic Novels, and Cartoons: Getting Started (Northwestern University Libraries)
  • Special Issue : Graphic (Atrium: The Report of the Northwestern Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program, Spring 2012 (10),  guest co-editors: Catherine Belling and MK Czerwiec)
  • Graphic Medicine COI (NNLM Region 7 Community of Interest)
  • Graphic Medicine series (Penn State University Press)

LibGuides:

  • Graphic Medicine LibGuide (University of Washington)
  • Graphic Medicine & Comics in Healthcare LibGuide (University of Michigan)

Books

Websites

Definitions and Descriptions

“Graphic Medicine is the intersection of the medium of comics and the discourse of healthcare.” - Ian Williams, MD, "Why Graphic Medicine"

"Graphic Medicine is the use of comics to tell personal stories of illness and health. The combined language of words and pictures that is the comic medium gives approachability and emotional impact to these personal stories, and even to the clinical data they sometimes include. - National Library of Medicine exhibits site

"Graphic Medicine, or the use of comics medicine, provides opportunities for participants in healthcare to engage with the experience(s) of health in unique ways. Example areas in the field include instructional and educational comics, graphic memoirs (or pathographies), fictionalized medical encounters, comic pamphlets and posters, comics creation guides, monographs on comic studies, and more...” - Matthew Noe, "Managing Graphic Medicine in Academic Health Sciences Libraries