This inaugural volume in the Graphic Medicine series establishes the
principles of graphic medicine and begins to map the field. The volume
combines scholarly essays by members of the editorial team with
previously unpublished visual narratives by Ian Williams and MK
Czerwiec, and it includes arresting visual work from a wide range of
graphic medicine practitioners. The book's first section, featuring
essays by Scott Smith and Susan Squier, argues that as a new area of
scholarship, research on graphic medicine has the potential to challenge
the conventional boundaries of academic disciplines, raise questions
about their foundations, and reinvigorate literary scholarship--and the
notion of the literary text--for a broader audience. The second section,
incorporating essays by Michael Green and Kimberly Myers, demonstrates
that graphic medicine narratives can engage members of the health
professions with literary and visual representations and symbolic
practices that offer patients, family members, physicians, and other
caregivers new ways to experience and work with the complex challenges
of the medical experience. The final section, by Ian Williams and MK
Czerwiec, focuses on the practice of creating graphic narratives,
iconography, drawing as a social practice, and the nature of comics as
visual rhetoric. A conclusion (in comics form) testifies to the diverse
and growing graphic medicine community. Two valuable bibliographies
guide readers to comics and scholarly works relevant to the field.
