Call for Papers: 2017 Comics & Medicine Conference: Access Points, deadline January 30th

Submit proposals by January 30th, 2017.

This year’s Comics & Medicine theme is Access Points. We invite participants to consider accessibility as a crucial aspect linking comics and health. Comics—a medium broadly characterized as “accessible” because of its ability to reach diverse audiences and to provide a platform for marginalized voices—can make visible and reflect upon the urgent subject of health access. Comics can explore the issue of accessibility in past and current practices of health care and can point to imaginative solutions for extending and expanding health care. We invite the submission of a wide variety of abstracts focusing on health, medicine, and comics in any form (e.g. graphic novels and memoir, comic strips, manga, web comics) that examine or showcase topics including, but not limited to:

• Comics depictions of disability
• Visual depictions of systemic and structural inequities in health care and social determinants of health
• Use of comics to provide health education for or about under-served communities
• Comics representations of physical or geographical spaces related to the delivery of medical care
• Collaborative comics projects that create access points between patients, healthcare providers, community organizations, and/or institutional stakeholders
• Use of comics to access new understandings of bodily/mental states
• Therapeutic uses of comics and cartooning
• Use of comics to encourage conversations about accessible spaces/events
• Innovative uses of comics to access diverse health experiences
• Use of comics to visualize ideological and/or political boundaries and access to medical therapies
• Comics and environmental health
• Ethical implications of creating comics for patients, physicians, or institutions
• Trends in, histories of, or the use of comics in health care and public health

Presentation Formats

Lightning talks, Oral presentations, Panel discussions, Working Groups, Workshops

Submission process

Further instructions and submission process, and confirmed Keynote Speakers

Proposals should be submitted by January 30th to: graphic.medicine.conference(a)gmail.com
Abstracts will be peer-reviewed by an interdisciplinary selection committee. Notification of acceptance or rejection will be completed by the week of March 1st, 2017.

Please note

Presenters are responsible for session expenses (e.g. handouts and supplies) and personal expenses (travel, hotel, and registration fees). All presenters must register for the conference. Discounted rates and some limited scholarships will be available for students, artists, and others in need.