Author Series: Body, Soul, and Comics In-Person / Online
Join Countway Library and the MCPHS Center for Health Humanities for the official launch of A. David Lewis' newest book, Body, Soul, and Comics: Graphic Religion and Graphic Medicine! Q&A, book sales, and book signing to follow. Light refreshments will be provided.
Briana Martino, Chair of Department of Communications, Simmons University and co-editor of Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine will serve as moderator for the discussion.
About the Book
An exploration of how comics illuminate medicine, religion, and identity
Body, Soul, and Comics: Graphic Religion and Graphic Medicine follows A. David Lewis's unique scholarly journey through graphic religion and graphic medicine, exploring how comics intersect with healthcare, clinical practice, spirituality, patient experience, and belief. Drawing on more than two decades of academic research, Lewis reframes both fields through the distinct narrative and visual language of comics.
Though often seen as opposites—spiritual versus scientific—religion and medicine share concerns with selfhood, community, personal well-being, and transformation. Through comics, Lewis reveals these shared concerns and examines how selfhood, identity, and embodiment emerge through visual storytelling.
Blending scholarship with autobiography, Lewis weaves personal moments—a religious conversion, experiences with anxiety, and academic work within a healthcare setting—into a broader analysis of representation and meaning in comic books. His account resists the traditional divide between theory and lived experience, grounding abstract ideas in the personal and the visual.
About the Author
A. David Lewis is an associate professor of English and health humanities at Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS) and the author of Body, Soul & Comics (May 15, University of Mississippi Press). An Eisner Award nominee and judge, he is also the coeditor of Graven Images: Religion in Comic Books and Novels and Muslim Superheroes: Comics, Islam, and Representation.
A founder of library collections at both Boston University and MCPHS, Lewis's teaching and research focus on representations of cancer and loneliness in comic books and graphic novels. He is the inaugural coeditor of Graphic Medicine Review and the acclaimed author of comics including The Lone and Level Sands and the centennial comics adaptation of Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet.