Dear Readers, Thank you! Editing, producing, designing (and reading!) this journal has been exceptionally gratifying. We are thankful for the bright and bold writers who each week step out of the confines of their traditional disciplines. We are thankful for being introduced to new ideas, artistic works and academic texts. And we are thankful for…
A Discursive-Material Analysis of Stigma As Narrated By Victims Service Providers
Chuka Nestor Emezue// How and to what extent do victim service providers (VSP) co-construct stigma in their narratives of victimhood? In speaking with several VSPs – those who provide rehabilitative services for victims of trauma – my qualitative research study (ongoing as I write) on embodied stigma and narrated victimhood has so far underscored the…
Special Issue Review: Chemistry, Disability, and Frankenstein
Diana Rose Newby // Chemistry, Disability, and Frankenstein, theme issue of Literature and Medicine, vol. 36, no. 2, fall 2018. In her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley concludes with well wishes for her creation’s second life: “And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper” (25). Today,…
The Deaf Crusaders: A Risky Prophecy
Mia Florin-Sefton // In March 2008, The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) hosted a talk titled “A Spotlight on Deafness” [1]. The talk was one in a long series dedicated to discussing various conditions thought to be potentially treatable with the development of new embryonic stem cell therapies (ESC). It is noteworthy, however, that…
Sacred Space
Jennifer & April Edwell// Where do medical and spiritual geographies overlap?
Probing the Victorian Corpus: Health Humanities Approaches to 19th-Century Fiction
Synapsis Writers // MLA Conference, January 3, 2019 “What have the health humanities offered 19th-century literary studies?” In January, a group of Synapsis writers took up this call with great zest at the MLA Conference in Chicago, where they spoke on the inaugural panel sponsored by our journal. As these panel proceedings reveal, our speakers…
The Benefits of Reading: Happy Endings or Horror Stories?
Emily Wheater // Is reading good for us? For most of my life, the enjoyment of reading was incentive and justification enough for me to read. I read to cheer myself up, to escape, to learn, to engage. This belief in the inherent value of reading first came under attack when I went to university….
Dermography
Darian Goldin Stahl, Artist-in-Residence // Dermography Charcoal 6′ x 16′ 2018 Dermography considers how a haptic engagement with medical scans can mend the separation between scan-body and flesh-body after a diagnosis. When a patient sees an X-ray, CT scan, or MRI scan of their interior body, these ossified images are experienced only through the digital…
Even Superman Cries (Part 4): Conclusion to Emotions in Medicine
Jordan Babando // Imagine a friend of yours comes to you for relationship advice. The issue that is presented to you involves your friend’s significant other telling them they are not allowed to express emotions. Your friend is made to feel like any noticeable emotion would make their partner and anyone else around them feel…
Sick Night Fever
Benjamin Gagnon Chainey // The Modern Man of ideal humanity is, as remarks French writer and philosopher of science Claire Marin, paradoxically insensitive due to his cult of superhuman health. He is culturally sterile, locked up as he is in the closet of medical scientific ‘progress.’ In her 2013 essay, justly entitled L’Homme sans fièvre,…
Turning to the Structural in the Health Humanities
Gabi Schaffzin // I remember being at the South by Southwest Interactive conference in 2014 when Anne Wojcicki, co-founder and CEO of 23andMe gave one of the keynotes. The Yale-educated former investment banker was explaining how the healthcare related portfolio that she had managed in her past life actually profited from people getting sick; she…
