Graphic Embodiments: Perspectives on Health and Embodiment in Graphic Narratives

Comics and other graphic narratives powerfully represent embodied experiences that are difficult to express in language. A group of authors from various countries and disciplines explore the unique capacity of graphic narratives to represent human embodiment as well as the relation of human bodies to the worlds they inhabit. Using works from illustrated scientific texts to contemporary comics across national traditions, we discover how the graphic narrative can shed new light on everyday experiences. Essays examine topics that are easily recognized as anchored in the body as well as experiences like migration and concepts like environmental degradation and compassion that emanate from or impact on our embodied states.

Graphic Embodiments is of interest to scholars and students across various interdisciplinary fields including comics studies, gender and sexuality studies, visual and cultural studies, disability studies and health and medical humanities.

Contributors: Frederick Luis Aldama (Ohio State University), Jodi Cressman (Dominican University), Lisa DeTora (Hofstra University), Katelyn Dykstra (University of Manitoba), Antonio J. Ferraro (Ohio State University), Carl Fisher (California State University at Long Beach), Barbara Grüning (University of Milan Bicocca), Jordana Greenblat (York University), Alison Halsall (York University), Michael J. Klein (James Madison University), Jeannie Ludlow (Eastern Illinois University), Lauren Rizzuto (Tufts University), Evelyn Rogers (Moorpark College), Shreya Sengai (Northeastern University)

Lisa DeTora is Associate Professor and Director of STEM Writing at Hofstra University in Hempstead NY.

Jodi Cressman is Professor and Chairperson of English at Dominican University in River Forest IL.