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Reposted by Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D.

Christine Slobogin @slobogin.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

A labor of love and laughter!! Our book _Sick Jokes_ is finally out with @manchesterup.bsky.social ! Working on this with @katiesnow.bsky.social and @lauracowley.bsky.social has been a blast, and our contributors are BRILLIANT! Have your libraries order it!!

Me (a white woman with shortish dark blonde hair in a black and white horizontal striped dress) smiling while standing in front of a green plant holding two copies of the book _Sick Jokes: Visual Histories of Humour, Health and the Body_

Close up of the cover of _Sick Jokes: Visual Histories of Humour, Health and the Body_. The cover includes the title in orange and "Edited by Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow and Laura Cowley" in yellow. The cover image is a black-and-white photograph of a white man with glasses and an oxygen tube and hospital gown pulled up to reveal both a Karposi's sarcoma and a happy face tattoo.

Photo of two pages at the beginning of the book.

A selection:

A note on the cover image
When deciding which image from this volume to put on the cover, we knew that we wanted something that captured one of the book's central themes: the use of humour as a means of reclaiming power from the medical systems or diagnoses that so often leave us feeling powerless. Marc Geller's photograph of Tom Shearer does exactly that, with Tom's personality - embodied in his smiley face tattoo and steady gaze - posing a pointed challenge to medical and cultural assumptions about what it means to be, or to joke about being, 'sick'. The context in which this portrait (one of many, discussed in Jo Michael Rees's Chapter 6, in this volume) was taken also suggests the importance of laughing in the faces of death and danger, of creating community and of sharing experience - other prominent themes throughout Sick Jokes.
We are very aware of the ethical quandaries of sharing patient photographs, especially on a book cover, publicly viewable on shelves and on screens. While we cannot get consent from Shearer for this specific use of his photograph, we have received permission from Geller. The portrait was taken by Geller on assignment for the American LGBT magazine The Advocate in 1991, to accompany an interview about Shearer and Beowulf Thorne's radically funny wine Diseased Pariah News. Geller stated in an email to us that he felt Tom's bravery in creating such a zine comes through in the way he faced the camera. While we cannot know how Shearer or Thorne imagined these portraits might circulate after their deaths, the photographs belong to a project and artistic friendship that was itself public-facing.
We hope that this photograph draws people into this volume while also showing Shearer as he wanted to be perceived. We hope that we have done him - and other patients, artists and jokers - justice.
Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow and Laura Cowley

Dedications
For Cindy Slobogin, who taught me to love art - Christine Slobogin
For Rory Ivor Snow, who can find the funny in anything - Katie Snow
licence, thanks to the supertial commercial us, dischindle
For Sue Cowley, who was a good patient but a far better teacher -
Laura Cowley

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Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D. @jmrezes.bsky.social · 18/06/2026

my gender is “presumed to be a food critic” every time I dine solo

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Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D. @jmrezes.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

I am launching #Rank&Spoils, a culinary criticism (anti-food blog?) publication in bad taste! Twice-a-month, I review a new bar, restaurant, eatery, recipe book, or cooking show in the hopes of connecting readers to the nuisances of “fine” dining. #restaurantreview #foodcritic #foodwriting #badtaste

substack.com

Jiffy Mae's Sick Kitchen (@jmrezes)

Dear funky foodies, I am launching “Rank & Spoils,” a culinary criticism publication centering bad taste. Nitpicking the smallest stains and inconveniences. Reminding us of the material realities of...

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Reposted by Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D.

Christine Slobogin @slobogin.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

As our author Jo Michael Rezes powerfully writes about this photograph of Tom Shearer: "Power resides in Shearer’s direct, unwavering gaze into the camera. He does not look away, not into a middle-distance of metaphysical abstraction, but at us, the viewers..." (contd.)

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Reposted by Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D.

Christine Slobogin @slobogin.bsky.social · 27/01/2026

Much needed good news: _Sick Jokes_ is in production @katiesnow.bsky.social @lauracowley.bsky.social Our brilliant authors have written chapters on the intersection of visual culture, humor, and health (see ToC) And we're thrilled with the cover from @manchesterup.bsky.social - more in next post.

Cover of a book
"Edited by Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow and Laura Cowley.
Sick jokes: Visual histories of humour, health and the body."

The cover image is a black-and-white photograph of a white man with short hair, a gold earring, stubble, glasses, and an oxygen tube. He makes eye contact with the viewer and his mouth is slightly open, perhaps in a smile. His hospital gown is pulled up to reveal both a Kaposi's lesion and a smiley face tattoo.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Christine Slobogin, Katie Snow and Laura Cowley

PART I – PATHOLOGIES AND POWER IN PRINT
Chapter 1 – ‘Uncorking Old Sherry’: Alcohol, the body and political decline in visual culture. The case of Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Callum Smith

Chapter 2 – Bedroom eyes as bedside manner: Humorous expressions of medical impropriety in mid-nineteenth-century visual culture
Rebecca Whiteley

Chapter 3 – ‘The top set’s artificial, but the bottom’s my own!’: Comic representations of false teeth and denture users in mid-twentieth-century British seaside postcards
Georgia Haire

PART II – DYING LAUGHING: DEATH, DISFIGUREMENT, DISEASE, AND DISABILITY
Chapter 4 – Dancing, laughing and sexing (with) death: Edvard Munch’s gendered medical humour
Allison Morehead

Chapter 5 – Tube pedicles and positionality: The visual humour of a plastic surgery technique
Christine Slobogin

Chapter 6 – The bittersweet look(s) of AIDS: Consuming the ironic waste of HIV/AIDS imagery (and other butts of the joke) in Diseased Pariah News
Jo Michael Rezes

Chapter 7 – Irony, assisted dying and The Disabled Avant-Garde
Laura Cowley

PART III – COMICAL HEALTH COMMUNICATIONS
Chapter 8 – ‘Doctor, are you speaking in tongues?’: Humour and the health humanities of Selma and Lois DeBakey
Jeffrey S. Reznick

Chapter 9 – Tough Shit Thomas and Peanut Pete: Harm reduction comics and British identities in the 1990s
Peder Clark

Chapter 10 – Pandemic funnies: Humour in COVID-19 comics
Soha Bayoumi

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Reposted by Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D.

Dr. Alex Ketchum (she/her) @aketchum22.bsky.social · 01/12/2025

Thank you to everyone who came to our event about HIV/AIDS +food +LGBTQ+ communities today! This event is part of our series speaking about Queers at the Table ( @arsenalpulp.bsky.social ). Thanks @dogspunk.bsky.social @mcgillarts.bsky.social Events at: www.queerfoodconference.com/p/additional...

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Reposted by Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D.

Mattilda B Sycamore @mbsycamore.bsky.social · 14/08/2025

Here it is, the call for submissions for my next anthology, ACT UP BEYOND NEW YORK: Stories and Strategies from a Movement to End the AIDS Crisis, to be published by @haymarketbooks.org! Please forward widely!⚡💕⚡💕⚡ Here's the link to the call: www.mattildabernsteinsycamore.com/other

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

ACT UP BEYOND NEW YORK:
STORIES AND STRATEGIES FROM A MOVEMENT TO END THE AIDS CRISIS

Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore

(Magenta text on pink background).

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Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D. @jmrezes.bsky.social · 27/02/2025

stress-baking triple berry cornbread and cinnamon & molasses oat crumble cornbread for my LGBTQ+ Theatre students because they deserve better than this crap and I want them to be nourished both intellectually and gastronomically

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Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D. @jmrezes.bsky.social · 01/02/2025

Teaching a new LGBTQ+ Theatre & Performance syllabus this semester and it’s heavy on the T and I think kinda really good so if anyone would like to see it!! I’ll post it here!

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Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D. @jmrezes.bsky.social · 11/01/2025

reading Bersani, Bornstein, and Bourdieu while slow cooking a high-fiber dinner? Call that graduating with a BM (Passing with Distinction).

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Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D. @jmrezes.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

writing a new syllabus feels like a combo move of 1) dropping an armful of groceries onto the counter and 2) cleaning out an old desk drawer

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Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D. @jmrezes.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

hi #ASTR2024!! First time back since 2019, so chat with me about my Nonbinary Acting Methods workshops!! or about taste studies!! I’m with Disability Performance Cultures tomorrow morning thanks to the wonderful @pmckelveyphd.bsky.social and @syates.bsky.social, but heading out in the afternoon.

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Reposted by Jo Michael Rezes, Ph.D.

Patrick McKelvey @pmckelveyphd.bsky.social · 15/11/2024

Impossible to get a good angle, but excited to see “Disability Works” at a full NYU Press exhibit for the first time

Photo of nyu press exhibition hall booth, featuring a poster of my book and a copy of it (among other excellent and exciting titles!)

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