The Applied Cartooning Lab works with organizations throughout the country to create unique educational resources and public education campaigns. Regardless of the topic, comics is a medium that is ideal for presenting complex issues and systems with clarity and style. We work closely with stakeholders, drawing upon their valuable perspectives and expertise to produce rigorous educational comics. We also believe that the resources we produce should be accessible to a broad audience at no or minimal cost.
Local and national collaborators include the Vermont Humanities, Vermont’s Secretary of State’s office, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, The Prison Studies Project at Harvard University, Chicago’s Mikva Challenge, Physicians for a National Health Program, the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth, and many more.
The Applied Cartooning Lab is a project of The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS), a college for cartoonists in White River Junction, Vermont that is dedicated to exploring the past, present, and potential of comics. CCS has built a network of hundreds of artists, writers, and publishing professionals, and continues to mentor new generations of storytellers. The Applied Cartooning Lab draws upon this creative, civic-minded community to fulfill our mission.
Do you want to work with us? Get in touch!
James Sturm is the cofounder of The Center for Cartoon Studies and director of the Applied Cartooning Lab. The Lab is supported by the faculty and staff of The Center for Cartoon Studies.
Illustration by Karen Czap.
Home page illustration by Eleanor Davis.
Fellows
John Swogger
Applied Cartooning Fellow, 2023-2024
John worked in archaeology for fifteen years, excavating medieval monasteries in England, prehistoric burial mounds in North Africa and stone age cities in Turkey before turning his attention to comics. He uses comics to talk about history and heritage working in partnership with museums and local communities. He works with indigenous archaeologists and peoples in South America and the Pacific Islands to create comics about ancient sites and traditions, often in local indigenous languages. In the United States, he works with Native American historians, elders and communities, making comics about NAGPRA repatriations and histories from tribal perspectives.
Shay Mirk
Applied Cartooning Fellow, 2023-2024
Shay is a graphic journalist, editor, and teacher. She is the author of the award-winning Guantanamo Voices: True Accounts from the World’s Most Infamous Prison. Theur book on the craft of making nonfiction comics, Drawn from the Margins: The Power of Graphic Journalism (co-written with CCS graduate Eleri Harris ‘14), will be published in 2024.
Rebecca Oluwatoyin Thompson
Applied Cartooning Fellow, 2022-2023
Rebecca is helping plan The Why We Punish Project, a public education campaign centered around the creation of a graphic guide about mass incarceration. Rebecca graduated from Harvard College where she studied Sociology and African & African American Studies, began to teach inside carceral settings, and served as student advisor to the Prison Studies Project.
MK Czerwiec
Will Eisner Applied Cartooning Fellow, 2019
MK Czerwiec, RN, MA is a nurse, cartoonist, educator, and co-founder of the field of Graphic Medicine who uses comics to reflect on the complexities of illness and caregiving.
Cara Bean
Cornish CCS Residency Fellowship, 2018
Cara Bean is an educator and the cartoonist of Let’s Talk About It: A Graphic Guide to Mental Health and the graphic novel about mental health for teens: Here I Am, I Am Me: An Illustrated Guide to Mental Health and the Brain Behind It (Workman Publishing, 2024)
Kurt Shaffert
Will Eisner Applied Cartooning Fellow 2016-2018
Kurt Shaffert is a clinical chaplain who worked with hospital patients to explore how cartooning can facilitate reflections that are unlikely to occur during conventional chaplain/patient conversations.
