Sathyaraj Venkatesan – författare

Developing an understanding of eating disorders beyond the biological/medical framework has become a necessity in present times, especially when eating disorders are swiftly spreading deep roots across the world. In view of the multidimensional etiology of eating disorders, there are increased efforts towards understanding its phenomenological, cultural, and other related non-medical aspects, and Gender, Eating Disorders, and Graphic Medicine leaps past the prevalent notions on eating disorder, and contributes to the developing corpus of affective knowledge on eating disorders among women through comics and graphic medicine. Taking cues from select graphic narratives on eating disorders, this book attempts to posit graphic medicine as one of the most befitting modes of life writing. This book is distinctive in that it is an attempt not only to explore the multi-dimensional etiology of eating disorders in women using graphic medicine narratives but also to understand how graphic medicine humanizes eating disorders by offering a unique ingress into women’s phenomenological experience of eating disorders.

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.

Developing an understanding of eating disorders beyond the biological/medical framework has become a necessity in present times, especially when eating disorders are swiftly spreading deep roots across the world. In view of the multidimensional etiology of eating disorders, there are increased efforts towards understanding its phenomenological, cultural, and other related non-medical aspects, and Gender, Eating Disorders, and Graphic Medicine leaps past the prevalent notions on eating disorder, and contributes to the developing corpus of affective knowledge on eating disorders among women through comics and graphic medicine. Taking cues from select graphic narratives on eating disorders, this book attempts to posit graphic medicine as one of the most befitting modes of life writing. This book is distinctive in that it is an attempt not only to explore the multi-dimensional etiology of eating disorders in women using graphic medicine narratives but also to understand how graphic medicine humanizes eating disorders by offering a unique ingress into women’s phenomenological experience of eating disorders.

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.

This book investigates how graphic medicine enables sufferers of mental illness to visualise the intricacies of their internal mindscape through visual metaphors and reclaim their voice amidst stereotyped and prejudiced assumptions of mental illness as a disease of deviance and violence.In this context, by using Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), this study uncovers the broad spectrum of the mentally ills’ experiences, a relatively undertheorised area in medical humanities. The aim is to demonstrate that mentally ill people are often represented as either grotesquely exaggerated or overly romanticised across diverse media and biomedical discourses. Further, they have been disparaged as emotionally drained and unreasonable individuals, incapable of active social engagements and against the healthy/sane society.The study also aims to unsettle the sanity/insanity binary and its related patterns of fixed categories of normal/abnormal, which depersonalise the mentally ill by critically analysing seven graphic narratives on mental illness.

This book investigates how graphic medicine enables sufferers of mental illness to visualise the intricacies of their internal mindscape through visual metaphors and reclaim their voice amidst stereotyped and prejudiced assumptions of mental illness as a disease of deviance and violence.In this context, by using Lakoff and Johnson’s conceptual metaphor theory (CMT), this study uncovers the broad spectrum of the mentally ills’ experiences, a relatively undertheorised area in medical humanities. The aim is to demonstrate that mentally ill people are often represented as either grotesquely exaggerated or overly romanticised across diverse media and biomedical discourses. Further, they have been disparaged as emotionally drained and unreasonable individuals, incapable of active social engagements and against the healthy/sane society.The study also aims to unsettle the sanity/insanity binary and its related patterns of fixed categories of normal/abnormal, which depersonalise the mentally ill by critically analysing seven graphic narratives on mental illness.

Dementia and Graphic Medicine explores how graphic medicine—through memoirs by caregivers and families—offers nuanced understandings and humane representations of individuals with dementia that restore their personhood, dignity, and agency.Dementia, a neurodegenerative condition, often reduces individuals to their impairments, overlooking their personhood. This book challenges this, critiquing the influence of mind-body dualism, biomedicine on personhood, and the institutional dynamics that perceive those living with dementia as a "living death." It examines the transformative potential of graphic medicine in enabling dementia caregivers to visually articulate their interpretations of the complex experiences of individuals with dementia. Utilizing Tom Kitwood’s concept of personhood as a framework, the study uncovers a diverse range of subjective experiences and proposes an alternative to the biomedicalization of dementia, promoting a more compassionate and humanistic approach to caregiving. Additionally, it investigates how non-medical conceptualizations and alternative social responses to dementia challenge existing hierarchical models and stereotypes in dementia caregiving.Bridging dementia studies, graphic medicine, and health humanities, this work provides scholars, practitioners, and caregivers with innovative insights for compassionate understanding, inclusive care, and social change. The book will also be suitable for readers in visual studies and narrative medicine.

India Retold: Dialogues with Independent Documentary Filmmakers in India is an attempt to situate and historicize the engagement of independent documentary filmmakers with the postcolonial India and its discourses with a focus on their independent documentary practices. Structured as an interview collection, the book examines how these documentary filmmakers, though not a homogeneous category, practice their independence through their ideology, their filmmaking praxis, their engagement with the everyday and their formal experiments. As a sparsely studied filmmakers, the book through meticulously tracing a wide ranging historical transitions (often marked by communal conflicts and the forces of globalization) not only details the ways in which independent filmmakers in India address the questions of postcolonial nation and its modernist projects but also explores their idiosyncratic views of these filmmakers which are characterized by a definitive departure from the logic of commercial films or state-sponsored documentary films. More important in many ways, these documentary filmmakers expose incongruences in national institutions and programs, embrace the voice of the underrepresented, and thus, imagine an alternative vision of the nation. During the last three years of the execution of the project, thirty Indian documentary filmmakers are interviewed in this book. Given the dearth of quality interviews and little theoretical engagement with documentary as a genre, this book would not only fill in the gap in scholarship but also would serve as an authentic guide for interested readers and for documentary filmmakers alike.

India Retold: Dialogues with Independent Documentary Filmmakers in India is an attempt to situate and historicize the engagement of independent documentary filmmakers with the postcolonial India and its discourses with a focus on their independent documentary practices. Structured as an interview collection, the book examines how these documentary filmmakers, though not a homogeneous category, practice their independence through their ideology, their filmmaking praxis, their engagement with the everyday and their formal experiments. As a sparsely studied filmmakers, the book through meticulously tracing a wide ranging historical transitions (often marked by communal conflicts and the forces of globalization) not only details the ways in which independent filmmakers in India address the questions of postcolonial nation and its modernist projects but also explores their idiosyncratic views of these filmmakers which are characterized by a definitive departure from the logic of commercial films or state-sponsored documentary films. More important in many ways, these documentary filmmakers expose incongruences in national institutions and programs, embrace the voice of the underrepresented, and thus, imagine an alternative vision of the nation. During the last three years of the execution of the project, thirty Indian documentary filmmakers are interviewed in this book. Given the dearth of quality interviews and little theoretical engagement with documentary as a genre, this book would not only fill in the gap in scholarship but also would serve as an authentic guide for interested readers and for documentary filmmakers alike.

This book examines the emergence of a new normal that has structured the lived experiences of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic through a close reading of graphic medical texts from both digital and print sources. Interdisciplinary in scope and integrating theoretical insights from graphic medicine, health humanities, literary theory, and comics studies, this book scrutinises and interprets the experiences and perspectives of healthcare professionals, frontline workers, patients, and individuals from diverse backgrounds impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. Through dedicated chapters on masking, sanitization, touch, and altered spatio-temporality, this book investigates the emotional, psychological, and sociocultural implications of these themes, highlighting both universally shared and contextually specific experiences. In particular, the book critically analyses comics that frame the pandemic beyond its immediate biological implications, thus providing readers with a framework to engage with and critically reflect on the COVID-19 crisis.

This book addresses basic issues in language education and explores how reading, with a focus on meaning, contributes to the development of all aspects of language including vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and syntax.

This book addresses basic issues in language education and explores how reading, with a focus on meaning, contributes to the development of all aspects of language including vocabulary, spelling, grammar, and syntax.

This edited book analyses how artists, authors, and cultural practitioners have responded to and represented episodes of epidemics/pandemics through history.