Susan Squier (Pennsylvania State University): Epigenetics and the Graphic Embryo

This talk concerns what I call »graphic embryos,« the representations of embryos and embryonic development in graphic fiction, or comics. An early, iconic image of embryonic development was C.H. Waddington’s 1957 illustration of the epigenetic landscape. A ball — representing the embryo — is positioned on the top of a hill fissured by deep channels that will guide its path to the bottom. I will argue that the graphic embryos appearing in contemporary works of graphic medicine continue the innovation of Waddington’s epigenetic landscape — modeling embryonic development in time and space. Looking closely at five works of graphic medicine that depict embryos as part of an exploration of fertility and infertility, I will describe the basic tools for reading these graphic narratives, consider the variety of depictions they offer, and suggest what these graphic embryos might reveal about the epigenetic landscape in its original and contemporary forms.

Moderation: Vanessa Lux (ZfL)

Susan Squier ist Julia Gregg Brill Professor for Women's Studies and English an der Pennsylvania State University, wo sie 2010/11 als Direktorin das Science, Technology, and Society (STS)-Program leitete. Squier promovierte an der Stanford University und ist Vorstandsmitglied sowie ehemalige Präsidentin der Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts. Im Mittelpunkt ihrer Forschungsinteressen stehen kulturwissenschaftliche Fragen an Medizin und Wissenschaft, feminist theory sowie Comics und Medizin.

Publikationen (Auswahl)

• Poultry Science, Chicken Culture: A Partial Alphabet (Rutgers UP 2011)
• Liminal Lives: Imagining the Human at the Frontiers of Biomedicine (Duke UP 2004)
• Communities of the Air: Radio Century, Radio Culture (Duke UP 2003)
• Playing Dolly: Technocultural Formations, Fantasies, and Fictions of Assisted Reproduction (Mithg., Rutgers UP 1999)
• Babies in Bottles: Twentieth Century Visions of Reproductive Technology (Rutgers University 1994)
• Arms and the Woman: War, Gender, and Literary Representation (Mithg., Duke UP, 1989)