Doctors Differ: Early Medical Caricature and the Birth of the Comics Form

Jared Gardner is the Joseph V. Denney Designated Professor of English and Director of Popular Culture Studies at The Ohio State University, specializing in American literature, comics, film, and popular culture. Dr. Gardner is the author of Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature, 1787-1845; Projections: Comics and the History of 21st-century Storytelling; and The Rise and Fall of Early American Magazine Culture, among other books and writings.

Dr. Gardner recently curated the Drawing Blood: Comics and Medicine exhibition at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum, which traces the history of comics’ obsession with medicine from the 18th century to today, and will serve as the subject for his lecture.