Center for the Humanities

A collaborative public health-informed comic on the COVID-19 pandemic  

This visual text represents some of the content from the article, Women, Childbirth, and the Sticky Tamales: Nahua Rhetoric and Worldview in the Glyphic Codex Borgia, by Felicia Lopez. Through the use of comic book conventions, readers are guided through the decipherment of logographic writing from Central Mexico and, in the process, are shown how colonization has limited our contemporary understanding of ancient Indigenous people. By offering reinterpretations of glyphs that reveal the cultural knowledge of women, this guided reading of a codex image paints a picture of Aztecs and other Indigenous people as intelligent, complex, and inventors of their own unique writing systems.

A comic synopsis of the book Forging Communities in Colonial Alta California, edited by Kathleen L. Hull and John G. Douglass (University of Arizona Press, 2018).

This comic is based on Prof. Asmeret Asefaw Berhe's TEDtalk "A climate change solution that's right under our feet" (https://www.ted.com/talks/asmeret_asefaw_berhe_a_climate_change_solution_that_s_right_under_our_feet?language=en) 

Abstract from TED.com: There's two times more carbon in the earth's soil than in all of its vegetation and the atmosphere -- combined. Biogeochemist Asmeret Asefaw Berhe dives into the science of soil and shares how we could use its awesome carbon-trapping power to offset climate change. "[Soil] represents the difference between life and lifelessness in the earth system, and it can also help us combat climate change -- if we can only stop treating it like dirt," she says.

Based in a fictional town in rural California, “Thirsty for Change'” explores themes in environmental justice and the right to clean water. This bilingual comic book introduces concepts in water governance and illustrates the possibility of systemic change to water management through community empowerment. Resources from the nonprofit organization, Community Water Center, are included within. This project was funded through the Henry Luce Foundation and the Center for the Humanities at the University of California, Merced.