“Graphic medicine and literary pathographies: The aesthetics and politics of illness narratives in contemporary comics and literature” (PathoGraphics) analyzes English and German works from an inter-medial and cross-cultural perspective. Narratives in the genres known as graphic medicine and literary pathographies both address liminal experiences such as illness, chronic disease, and disability, offering individual stories of patients, family members, and health care professionals. Both genres can hence be understood as recent artistic contributions to debates on what it means to be human in the age of life sciences and biopolitics. The research project opens a dialogue between literary studies, media studies, cultural studies, history of science, and medicine, it pursues historical, aesthetic, political, and epistemic questions.
Funding period: 2016 - 2021
Contact persons:
Prof. Dr. Irmela Marei Krüger-Fürhoff, Freie Universität Berlin
in collaboration with
Einstein Visiting Fellow Prof. Susan Merrill Squier, Ph.D., Penn State University
E-mail: institut@raumexperimente.net
Website
Applicant: Freie Universität
Partner: Friedrich Schlegel Graduate School of Literary Studies