1st Edition
Gender, Eating Disorders, and Graphic 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.
Introduction
Eating Disorders, Biocultures, and Graphic Medicine
Why Graphic Medicine?
Overview of the Book
1 A Prologue to Graphic Medicine
Medical Humanities: Towards the Humanization of Medical Science
Narrative Medicine: Understanding the Ordeals of Illness
Spectacles of Suffering: Representation of Illness across Media
Comics Medium and Healthcare
Comics, Women, and the Counterculture
Graphic Medicine: Definition and Scope
Conclusion
2 Clinical Evolution of Eating Disorders and the Rise of the Biocultures
Chronicles of Starvation: A Cultural History of Eating Disorders
The Middle Ages: Fasting Saints and Miracle Maidens
From Miracle to Madness and Hysteria
Eating Disorders: A Medical Introduction
Anorexia Nervosa
Bulimia Nervosa
Binge Eating and EDNOS
Pitfalls in the Popular Explanatory Models of Eating Disorders
The Biocultural Model
Tracing the Footprints of Culture in Science
Graphic Medicine and the Biocultures
Conclusion
3 Warped Femininities: Understanding the Corporeal Nexus of Anorexia and Culture
The Ideal Female Body as a Cultural Construct
Anorexia Nervosa: A Biocultural Approach
"At that time, nobody considered it": Anorexia and Familial Pressure
"Neil! You look like a man!": Body Shaming and Anorexia
"As long as I’m thin… I’ll be invincible:": Media and Thinspiration
Conclusion
4 Subjective Incarnations of Anorexia: Creative Metaphors and Graphic Externalization
Comics, Metaphors, and Externalization
Graphic Medicine and the Iconography of Illness
"I’m Tyranny, your other self": The Metaphor of Self-Oppression
"my Ed—so Big and STRONG": Relationship Metaphors
Dark Clouds of Despair: The Metaphor of Pervasiveness
Epitomizing the Indefinable: The Power of Comics Medium
Conclusion
5 From Abjection to Anorexia: Eating Disorders and the Horrors of the Female Body
Feminist Perspectives on Eating Disorders
Abjection: Origin, and Popular Definitions
Abjection and Anorexia: Theoretical Interventions of Megan Warin
"I feel disgusting": Menstruation, Abjection in Lighter Than My Shadow
"I hate this. I hate me": Menstruation and Abjection in Tyranny
"I’m disgusting": Self-Disgust and Sexual Abuse
Conclusion
Conclusion: Towards an Alternative Understanding of Eating Disorders
Biography
Anu Mary Peter was a Jawaharlal Nehru doctoral research fellow in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at the National Institute of Technology, Trichy (India). She is currently an independent health humanities researcher. Her research articles have appeared in various Web of Science/Scopus indexed journals such as Health: An International Journal for Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine, Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, and INKS: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, among others.
Sathyaraj Venkatesan is an Associate Professor of English, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, National Institute of Technology, Trichy (India). His research concentrates on illness narratives, graphic medicine, and literature and medicine. He is the author of four books and more than eighty research articles. His most recent volume of co-edited essays is titled The Idea and Practice of Reading (2018).
