GRAPHIC MEDICINE AT THE NYU SCHOOL OF MEDICINE

The cover of the mini comic.
How many organs/structures can you identify?

Last fall (2018) I taught a Graphic Medicine course for the NYU School of Medicine's Master Scholars Program in Humanistic Medicine. It was a wonderful experience. I got paid to talk about comics to medical students and hospital staff! 

We read as many genres and artists as I could cram in to a six seminar series. Julia Wertz, Roz Chast, Grant Morrison, Caroline Pequita, Osama Tezuka, Bishakh Som, Iasmin Oma Ata, and oh-so-many-more cartoonists gave us plenty to consider and discuss.

We analyzed the  medical clinical encounter from the perspectives of patients, doctors, caregivers, and more. We explored issues like paternalism, miscommunication in medicine, professional burn out, gender identity, women's health... the list goes on. 

At the end of each class EVERYONE drew. It was fascinating to watch these talented doctors, students, researchers, and nurses, ponder my in-class assignments and create lively, funny, and touching comics in literally minutes!

We drew symptoms, wrote comic strips about personal clinical and academic encounters, designed cute organ mascots, and illustrated popular sayings about health and medicine. "Cute" is not an aesthetic that is usually explored in medical contexts. Illustrating and making (even silly) comics about medicine is a really interesting method for appreciating multiple pathways of communication. Plus it breaks up the intensity of creating uncomfortable narratives.

At the end of the course, we assembled the work into a mini comic. You can see some examples on the Lit Med Magazine site and check out their literature, arts, and medicine database.