Health and Humanities

Published in the underground in 1972, Justin Green's Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin Mary is an autobiographical graphic memoir concerned with Binky Brown's (Green's comic alter ego) Catholic guilt, sexual awakening, and struggles with OCD. Although Binky Brown is often read as a meditation on sexuality and as the first extended confessional autobiographical comics, no study thus far has investigated Green's refigured and repeated use of tarot cards. In fact, the author himself attests to the influence of tarot cards in the afterword to McSweeney's absolute edition (2009) and in various interviews.

This encyclopedia entry examines the historical and political contexts of race, racism, medicine, and medical racism in the United States from the colonial era to present. This entry consists of an area of health humanities study that applies critical race theory and social justice theory to examine race as a social construct with consequences for both theoretical medicine and the lived experience of medical care and medical practice based on racialized identity.