This event is being presented as part of our partnership with the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Society
Presented by Valentino L Zullo
Mental health practitioners have long been invested in comics, from psychologist, William Moulton Marston’s creation of Wonder Woman to psychiatrist, Fredric Wertham’s infamous attack on comics as a corrupter of youth to the current burgeoning of comics that chronicle stories of mental health treatments as evidenced, for instance, in Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? or Ellen Forney’s Marbles. This presentation takes as its central purpose an exploration of the intersecting history and uses of comics with the discourses of mental health. From William Marston’s Wonder Woman or Fredric Wertham’s fear of the corruptive power of comics to the more recent outpouring of comics autobiography, this panel will consider the influence and intrusion of mental health on comics that has facilitated new stories. We will think about how the study of mental health both as a clinical practice and as a theoretical discourse can illuminate the history of comics and comics form in practice. We will also consider how the influence, intrusion, and even inspiration of mental health practitioners perhaps surprisingly defined the history of comics.
Bio: Valentino L. Zullo is a PhD candidate in the Department of English at Kent State University and licensed social worker practicing as a Maternal Depression Therapist at OhioGuidestone and a candidate for psychoanalytic training at the Cleveland Psychoanalytic Center. He is the former Ohio Center for the Book Scholar-in-Residence at Cleveland Public Library where he continues to lead the Get Graphic program, and American Editor of the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. He has published in the Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics, Inks: The Journal of the Comics Studies Society, Asylum: A Magazine for Democratic Psychiatry and a chapter in the book, More Critical Approaches to Comics.