The 9th International Health Humanities Conference

Presentation information

Oral presentation

Practice (Implementation)

[7] Workshop

[7-4] Graphic medicine and the art of self-reflection: Using comics to tell our stories about identity and community

*Brian Callender1, Kathryn West1 (1. University of Chicago(United States of America))

Presentation language:English

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Both the Covid-19 pandemic and current social justice movement have profoundly altered our senses of identity and community. We are in a historical moment where the health humanities are increasingly being utilized to capture and amplify narratives of the pandemic and racial justice movements, and as such graphic medicine is positioned to leverage the unique characteristics of comics to reflect upon and express what we are experiencing. This workshop will focus on using the medium of comics as a self-reflective exercise to explore identity and community through the creation of graphic narratives. In workshops we’ve conducted in clinical and academic settings, we found that comics-creation is an approachable and innovative method for creating narratives, opening conversations, and sharing experiences while empowering the individual to express themselves.

The outline of the 30-minute workshop is as follows:
1)Introductions,
2)The Body and Identity (create a body map that identifies key features of one’s identity; how is identity impacted both externally and internally?),
3)Community (create a community map that identifies key features of one’s community and how their community has been affected by the pandemic and/or social justice movement; look for places of inclusion and exclusion),
4)Sharing and debrief,
5)Wrap-up