Infertility Comics and Graphic Medicine

Description

Infertility Comics and Graphic Medicine examines women’s graphic memoirs on infertility, foregrounding the complex interrelationship between women’s life writing, infertility studies, and graphic medicine. Through a scholarly examination of the artists’ use of visual-verbal codes of the comics medium in narrating their physical ordeals and affective challenges occasioned by infertility, the book seeks to foreground the intricacies of gender identity, embodiment, subjectivity, and illness experience. Providing long-overdue scholarly attention on the perspectives of autobiographical and comics studies, the authors examine the gendered nature of the infertility experience and the notion of motherhood as an ideological force which interpolates socio-cultural discourses, accentuating the potential of graphic medicine as a creative space for the infertile women to voice their hitherto silenced perspectives on childlessness with force and urgency. This interdisciplinary volume will be of interest to scholars and students in comics studies, the health humanities, literature, and women’s and gender studies, and will also be suitable for readers in visual studies and narrative medicine. Cover Endorsement Half Title Series Information Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Figures Acknowledgements Introduction Graphic Medicine and Gynographics: Discipline, Discourse, and Perspectives Infertility: Defining a Global Problem Is Infertility a Disease? Infertility and Gender Data for Analysis Aims, Objectives, and Methodology Overview of the Book References 1 Visualising Illness: Comics and Graphic Medicine Introduction Humanising Healthcare: From Medical Humanities to Health Humanities Narrative Medicine: Legitimising the Patient’s Perspective Autopathography, Graphic Pathography, and Life Writing Comics, Graphic Medicine, and Women’s Life Writing Graphic Medicine as a Pedagogical Tool Graphic Medicine as Therapy, Community, and Critique Internationalisation and Popularisation of Graphic Medicine Conclusion References 2 Imagining “The Barren”: Cultural Representations of Women’s Infertility Introduction Illness and Representations Infertile Women in Popular Novels and Mass-Market Women’s Magazines Self-blame and Neurosis in TV Melodramas Egg-freezing Ads and the Rhetoric of Choice Infertile Monsters in Reality TV, and Horror Films Countering Infertile Subjectivity in Women’s Memoirs Conclusion Notes References 3 Hegemonic Creations: Pronatalism and the Social Construction of Motherhood Introduction Pronatalism and the Social Construction of Motherhood “NO! THIS Way!”: Girl Child as a Pronatalist Subject “We’re in the Club!”: Childlessness and Cultural Otherhood “Let Me Out!”: Thinking Beyond Motherhood Conclusion Acknowledgements Note References 4 The Infertile Body in the Clinic: Medicalisation and Loss of Agency Introduction Feminist Critique of Medicalisation “The Infertility Death Trap”: Broken Eggs and Present/Perfect “Der Straightener Herr Doktor”: The Facts of Life and Good Eggs Conclusion Notes Acknowledgements References 5 Traversing Infertility: Endurance and Alternatives Introduction Resilience, Coping, and Infertile Subjectivity Spiritual and Creative Coping in Good Eggs Art, Ecology, and Alternative Mothering Practices in The Facts of Life Conclusion References Conclusion References Index