Lissa: Still Time is a collaborative work of graphic medical anthropology undertaken by Coleman Nye (SFU) and Sherine Hamdy (Brown University) in which we use comics to convey ethnographic insights about bioethics and global health in two vastly different settings: that of the contemporary Arab world, and that of the United States. The authors developed this (ethno)graphic novel based on their respective ethnographic research on cancer genetics in the US (Nye) and organ transplantation in Egypt (Hamdy). This illustrated narrative follows the unlikely friendship between an American girl, Anna, the daughter of expats living in Cairo with a family history of breast cancer, and Layla, the daughter of the doorman/servant of the apartment building, who grows to become a resolute physician struggling for better public health justice and rights in Egypt. The project has three components: (1) a print publication of the graphic narrative Lissa through University of Toronto Press’s new ethnoGRAPHIC series, (2) an illustrated, interactive digital publication Academic Research and Comics, and (3) a documentary film by Francesco Dragone that captures the process of making Lissa. This talk will provide an overview of the project, and will reflect on how the graphic and digital components open up critical spaces for interdisciplinary collaboration, academic communication, and multimedia engagement for innovating research and effecting social change.
About the Speaker:
Coleman Nye is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University. Her current book project, Speculative Science: Gender, Genetics, and the Futures of Life, examines the performative dimensions of breast and ovarian cancer genetics in the contemporary US. Her work has been published in TDR: The Drama Review and Women and Performance. She holds a PhD in Performance Studies and an MA in Anthropology from Brown University.