Dr. Rodrigues traveled to Toronto,
Canada, to present research at the international conference titled, “Comics
& Medicine: Navigating the margins.” The paper was co-authored with Dr.
O’Rourke, our department’s primary scholar of comic book studies. Their paper
was titled, “A Symbolic Bridge of Words and Images: The “Silver Scorpion” and
Medical Communication” and focused on the specific context of intercultural
understanding within the health care setting. The paper drew from theories of
storytelling, visual literacy, narrative analysis and popular culture to
emphasize the potential of comics to help overcome some of the barriers presented
by an intercultural situation within the health care setting. Comic books are
appropriately equipped to overcome these barriers since comic books bring
together the benefits of multiple components such as sequential art (complex
combination of visual and text), storytelling, and an overall familiarity
across the world with the genre of comic books.
The comic book “The Silver
Scorpion” has an interesting back story since it was created by 13 Syrian
students with disabilities and 10 American counterparts who came together at an
international disability summit in 2010, learned about each other and discussed
strategies for improving the rights and freedoms of the disabled. Dr. O’Rourke
became aware of the comic, was fascinated by its origins, and saw its relevance
to intercultural communication and the graphic medicine conference. He then
collaborated with Dr. Rodrigues, our resident intercultural communication
scholar, to develop the paper that was presented at the conference.
The conference drew presentations
from medical practitioners and scholars from multiple disciplines including
biomedicine, psychology, nursing, and counseling. Dr. Rodrigues found it
particularly reaffirming to mark that the one recurring theme across all the
presentations was the critical role communication played in the effective
delivery of health services. Scholars in the discipline of communication
studies have long been aware of this truth. It was gratifying to witness
communication receiving its due significance at a conference that has been
established by medical professionals.
