Room Pinni B3117 or Zoom (Link). (Meeting ID: 668 4700 7494 Passcode: 045076)
The narrative means, styles, and subject matters in Finnish graphic medicine zines
The recrding is available on Narrare’s webpage for two weeks after the seminar session.
Comics zines are care. As a temporally sensitive combination of words and images, comics provide a medium where expressions of an altered and often traumatic state of an ill-fallen body or mind can be explored in rich and unique ways. Furthermore, in self-published comics zines, the difficult, amorphous, and ugly sides of illness can be shown freely and without the constraints of traditionally published comics. With this, illness-focused graphic medicine zines may allow fresh types of illness narratives to emerge.
As underground culture, comics zines carry political possibilities of alternative, non-established ways of giving, receiving, and sharing care. Deeply political and sometimes loudly activist, these zines employ a number of narrative means to illustrate the embodied experiences of illness. Combinations of comics devices such as degrees of showing, visual metaphors and focalisation are used to tell mostly autobiographical illness narratives. The subject matters range from receiving a life-altering diagnosis to grappling with identity and selfhood branded as “illnesses to be cured”. Different styles and genres of comics are used: diary comics contain chaotic depictions of depression, whereas infocomic pulls the reader off a trans man’s then-and-there experience.
This presentation sketches the narrative means, styles, and subject matters in contemporary Finnish graphic medicine zines out in connection to Noora Raiskio’s doctoral thesis.
This talk is part of Research Centre Narrare’s Narrative Studies Seminar, which is open to all interested participants. The aim of the seminar is to allow for a multi- and interdisciplinary discussion on data, methods, theories, and the state of narrative research. Sessions consist of introductory presentations by researchers from different career stages and different fields studying narratives at Tampere University (up to 20 min), and general discussion.
Narrative Studies Seminar – Autumn 2026 Programme
15.9. Jussi Lahtinen: Finnish Working-Class Literature and Post-War National Narratives (1945–2025)
Room: Pinni B4113
29.9. Samuli Björninen: Factual narrative: its history, genres and uses
Room: Pinni B4113
6.10. Niki Iisakkila: Narrative Space: World-Building Across Media
Room: Pinni B4113
27.10. Aletta Kemppainen: Moderni avioliittojuoni Kinsellan ja Kajannon chick lit -teoksissa The Burnout (2023) ja Mittoja ja tilaustöitä (2019)
Tila: Pinni B3117
10.11. Noora Raiskio: The narrative means, styles, and subject matters in Finnish graphic medicine zines
Room: Pinni B3117
24.11. Olga Andreevskikh: Post-2022 queer Russophone media spaces: A shattered past, an uncertain future
Room: Pinni B3117
1.12. Helena Mäntyniemi: From Captivity to Consent: Gothic Lineages in Harry Potter Fanfiction Dark Romance Stories
Room: Pinni B3117
8.12. Matias Nurminen & Juha Raipola: Journalismin horjuvat merkitykset: piittaamattomat tulkinnat ja tiedon ehtojen murros
Tila: Pinni B3117
Updates and further information will be published on Narrare’s webpage