2020 New England Graphic Medicine Conference

March 26-28
Sponsored by the MCPHS University Center for Health Humanities,
with support from NNLM NER

Videos

A complete playlist of the NEGM20 videos, free to share, can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8qie3mKzKF8rmNw1L_VoBTyNffd4YqY7

Keynote Update!

Due to circumstances beyond anyone’s control, Lucy Knisley will not be able to participate in NEGM this year as our Keynote Speaker. Nevertheless, we wish her and her family well.

However, we are delighted to announce another stellar creator and thinker serving in this role…

Brian Fies

Brian Fies has been a journalist, an environmental chemist, a freelance journalist, a science writer and, beginning early in the 21st century, a cartoonist. His first graphic novel Mom’s Cancer, a true story about his mother’s diagnosis and treatment, won an Eisner Award, a German Youth Literature Prize, and other recognitions. In October 2017, Brian and his wife Karen lost their home in what was at that time the largest wildfire in California history. The webcomic he made gave a first-hand account from ground zero of a major disaster, and Brian expanded his webcomic into a full-length print version of A Fire Story, recently named a Finalist for a 2020 Excellence in Graphic Literature Awards (EGL Awards) in Best in Adult Graphic Literature (Non-Fiction).

Revised Program

Thursday, March 26

7pm-8pm: Opening Remarks, courtesy of the MCPHS Library – Official opening of MCPHS Graphic Medicine Collection
8pm-9pm: “Tech Rehearsal” (presenters and workshop leaders only)

Friday, March 27

11-12am: Workshop A – Experience, Process, and Papercuts: Making Mental Health Comics, Beth Barnett and Liz Bolduc Sux
12:30-2pm: Keynote, courtesy of the MCPHS School of Healthcare Business – Brian Fies
2:30-4pm: Panel A – Coronavirus Discussion
- COVID Comics – Alice Jaggers
- Brave New World: Including Graphic Medicine in a Traditional Medical Journal – Darren Taichman (Annals of Internal Medicine)
- Q&A and Open Discussion

Saturday, March 28

9:30-11:30am: Workshop B – Drawing through Depression and Cultivating Healthy Artistic Practices, Laura Lee Gulledge
- Part of the Virtual Book Tour for the new The Dark Matter of Mona Starr #artnerlove
9:30-11:30am: Panel B – Minding Graphic Medicine’s Rise
- Graphic Medicine and Canonization: Are We on a Worrisome Path?, Matthew Noe (Countway Library, Harvard Medical School)
- Who’s Not in the Room?, Cathy Leamy
- Dialog around Climate Crisis & Climate Anxiety, Maria Photinakis
- Differences in Comic Representation of Seizure with Patients and Healthcare Providers, Lara K. Ronan (Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth)
12:30-2pm: Panel C – Intersections
- Witness, Absence, Trauma, and Process: Artists from the Center for Cartoon Studies Reflect on Narrative and Practice, Issy Manley, Natalie Wardlaw, and Sage Persing (The Center for Cartoon Studies)
- Epilepsy and Law Enforcement, Phoebe Cohen
- The Young Adult Need for Graphic Medicine, Karen E. Roehr (UMASS Lowell)
12:30-2pm: Panel D – Pushing Boundaries
- Taiwanese Graphic Medicine and the Case of Between Realities, Pin-Chia Feng (National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan ROC)
- Diagnosing the Invisible: Grant Morrison’s The Invisibles and the Ontology of Graphic Medicine, Christopher McGunnigle (Seton Hall University)
- Humanism and the Premedical Realm: An Exercise in Graphic Medical Education, Ian Sampson (for Barrett Michalec and Frederic W. Hafferty)
4:30-6:30: Workshop C – The Opposite of Silence: A Deep Dive into a Comic about the AIDS Crisis and Echoes of Empathy, J.D. Lunt
7pm-8pm: Closing session, A. David Lewis (MCPHS University)

Call for COVID-19 Sessions

We are *re-opening* submissions for the virtual summit, adding one session or more on early Graphic Medicine responses to the COVID-19 crisis.

From now through Sunday, March 22nd, NEGM will accept new paper and presentation proposals concerning the novel coronavirus, its spread, and reactions to it. We know this would be early, embryonic work on the still-unfolding global response, but your proposals would still be welcome. Send your presentation title, abstract, and C.V. to A. David Lewis at a.lewis@mcphs.edu with the Subject line “NEGM COVID-19 Proposal” please.

By Monday, March 23rd, we will notify all submitters on the status of their materials and their potential inclusion in the conference later that week. An updated program will also be released at that time for our sessions beginning with the brief Opening Remarks on the evening of Thursday, March 26th.

Everyone is still welcome to register for the conference via EventBrite: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/new-england-graphic-medicine-conference-tickets-88070554399

Stay well, everyone!

Keynote Speaker

Lucy Knisley

Lucy Knisley is the author and illustrator of beloved graphic novels about memory, identity, food, and family. She previously published the New York Times bestseller Relish: My Life in the Kitchen and Something New with First Second. She has 48.2K instagram followers and she lives and works in Chicago, with her husband and child.

Kid Gloves: Nine Months of Careful Chaos

If you work hard enough, if you want it enough, if you’re smart and talented and “good enough,” you can do anything. Except get pregnant.

Her whole life, Lucy Knisley wanted to be a mother. But when it was finally the perfect time, conceiving turned out to be harder than anything she’d ever attempted. Fertility problems were followed by miscarriages, and her eventual successful pregnancy plagued by health issues, up to a dramatic, near-death experience during labor and delivery.

This moving, hilarious, and surprisingly informative memoir not only follows Lucy’s personal transition into motherhood but also illustrates the history and science of reproductive health from all angles, including curious facts and inspiring (and notorious) figures in medicine and midwifery. Whether you’ve got kids, want them, or want nothing to do with them, there’s something in this graphic memoir to open your mind and heart.

“Knisley’s nuanced look at pregnancy and her message of bodily autonomy will resonate with teens, especially those who appreciated the graphic anthology Mine!” – School Library Journal