What drove people to interrupt royal processions, could it be mental illness? What political purposes could a psychiatric diagnosis serve, could it be more than dismissing a petitioner?
Author: Tianyuan Huang
Tianyuan Huang is an Assistant Professor at the Center for Integrated Japanese Studies of Tohoku University in Japan. Her research combines the history of medicine and gender, science and technology studies, and agnotology—the study of ignorance—to probe the productive power of doubt and uncertainty in shaping ordinary people's lived experience of illness. Tianyuan has a background in international politics and public policy and worked as a researcher of international human rights mechanisms and politics for Tongyu, an LGBTI rights nonprofit based in Beijing. Having volunteered as a peer advocate for the Gay and Women's Health Projects (GHAP/WHAP) at Columbia University, where she was a PhD candidate, Tianyuan welcomes opportunities of interdisciplinary collaborations on subjects related to health humanities and medical education.
How to Talk to a Doctor (as a woman)
Tianyuan Huang // Reviewing recommendations on how to see a doctor from a women’s health journal in 1911, this essay explores physician-patient communication and what the distribution of responsibilities and powers tells us about a health culture in its fast evolving historical context.
The Road Not Taken: Thinking Beyond Vaccines
Tianyuan Huang// Truth be told, I did not see this coming. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I thought I would have been conducting dissertation research in Tokyo for nearly half a year by now; but I am still in New York City awaiting the lifting of travel bans, having already rescheduled flight tickets for the third…
What Are We Taking When We Take a Medicine? —Tracing the Pharmaceutical Nature of the Herbaceous Peony in Japanese History
Tianyuan Huang// How well do we know the taste of our own medicine? I mean this literally: think of a medication you once received, and try to recall what sensations it evoked. Did the taste tell you anything about its origin and materiality? Did the medication come from an animal, plant, or mineral? Was it…