11/8 2024 Ex-position Talks (II)

2024-10-17

2024 Ex-position Talks (II)

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures, National Taiwan University

Title: Graphic Medicine: Tracing the Roots and Mapping the Routes

Speaker: Dr. Sathyaraj Venkatesan (Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli, India.)

Time: 2–4 PM Friday, November 8, 2024

Venue: Online (registration link: forms.gle/1srgHN66bBkSjDBfA)

Hosted by Dr. Chung-Jen Chen (National Taiwan University)

Abstract:

This talk explores the origins, evolution, and significance of graphic medicine, an emerging field at the intersection of comics and healthcare. It begins by tracing the historical roots of the field, illustrating how comics have long addressed health-related concerns, from eighteenth-century depictions of medical culture to twenty-first-century public health campaigns. The talk highlights the pivotal role that comics have played in health communication and education, enhancing public understanding of medical advancements and health issues. By examining exemplars of the integration of narrative medicine with visual storytelling, it demonstrates how this fusion has given rise to graphic pathographies and considers future possibilities for this dynamic movement.

Speaker’s Bio:

Dr. Sathyaraj Venkatesan is Professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli (Tamil Nadu, India), where he specializes in health humanities and comics studies, with an emphasis on graphic medicine. He earned PhD from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur. He was a Fellow at the School of Criticism and Theory at Cornell University, New York, and a Senior International Bibliographer with the Publications of Modern Language Association of America (PMLA).

Venkatesan has traveled extensively across twenty states in India and to the USA, UK, France, Singapore, Malaysia, Germany, Japan, Hong Kong, South Korea, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Ireland.

Venkatesan is the author/co-author/editor/co-editor of nine books, including Pandemics and Epidemics in Cultural Representation (Singapore: Springer, 2022) with Antara Chatterjee, A. David Lewis, and Brian Callender; Infertility Comics and Graphic Medicine (New York/London: Routledge, 2021) with Chinmay Murali; India Retold (New York: Bloomsbury, 2021) with Rajesh James; Mental Disorders and Graphic Medicine (New York/London: Routledge, 2021) with Sweetha Saji; and Gender, Eating Disorders and Graphic Medicine (New York/London: Routledge, 2020) with Anu Mary Peter. Dr. Venkatesan has also authored over 120 research articles that span African American literature, health humanities, graphic medicine, film studies, and other literary and cultural studies disciplines.