Comics: They’re Good For Your Health!

In this presentation, students from a variety of academic fields from across the university—including Biology, Forensic Science, and Writing and Rhetoric—will share how they became, for one semester, comics artists.

In Professor Nathan Holic’s Graphic Medicine course in Spring 2025, students explored the intersection of comics and health / medicine, studying how artists and healthcare professionals have used the comics form to educate the broader public about important health issues, and how both patients and medical providers have used comics to better understand illness.

This presentation will showcase the dynamic visual projects of a number of students from the course. Students will discuss how the use of comics allowed them to visualize difficult health information, and how—despite having no prior art education—they were able to find their own voices as artists.