“Of Men, Mice, and Monsters: Body Images in David Small’s Stitches: A Memoir.” Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 3.1 (2012): 55–67. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009.Įl Refaie, Elisabeth. Signifying Bodies: Disability in Contemporary Life Writing. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.Ĭouser, G. Screening the Body: Tracing Medicine’s Visual Culture. University of Montréal, 2014.Ĭartwright, Lisa. “Drawing in the Margins: Identity and Subjectivity in Contemporary Autobiographical Comics.” Diss. issue of Amerikastudien/American Studies 56.4 (2011): 603–16.īyrn-Køhlert, Frederik. “Conquering Silence: David Small’s Stitches and the Art of Getting Better.” American Comic Books and Graphic Novels. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2014.īöger, Astrid. Death, Disability and the Superhero: The Silver Age and Beyond. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.Īlaniz, José. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. In other words, the necessary continuous repetition of the cartoonist’s avatar on the page is enough to raise issues of embodiment in graphic memoirs in general, and these are even more strongly foregrounded in graphic pathographies. She very instructively explains that comics artists producing autobiographical work are “in the unusual position of having to visually portray themselves over and over again constantly compelled to engage with their physical identities” ( Autobiographical 62). Elisabeth El Refaie, among others, 2 has shown that “picturing embodied selves” ( Autobiographical 49) is, in fact, one of the central concerns in graphic memoirs altogether.

Ian Williams has aptly characterized graphic pathographies as “the intellectual, emotional and manual act of somatic self-expression” (“Portrayal” 74). As such, the popular form of “graphic memoir” 1 is more and more linked to the history of literary illness narratives, and sometimes relabeled “graphic pathography” (Green and Myers). The evolution of American autobiographical comics over the past decades has been increasingly accompanied by a strong trend toward subject matters of illness, disability, or more generally any physical or psychological traits perceived as deviations from the norm.

David small's stitches