“Richin man nkäm ta qach’ab’äl: So that our language doesn’t die” What does it mean to say that a language is dead? Or that a language is dying? According to linguist David Crystal, “to say that a language is dead is like saying that a person is dead. It could be no other way—for languages…
Category: Race and Ethnicity
Instrumentalized Images: The Trouble with Representation, Truth, and Affective Power in Histories of American Gynecology
Thanks to crucial scholarship and committed activism, recent years have witnessed increased reporting and public-facing writing about the histories of racialized violence at the crux of gynecology’s emergence in the United States. Much of this writing centers the figure of J. Marion Sims. In a media landscape that seems to demand visual accompaniment, authors and…
Is this ‘For Us’? Doulas, Medical Racism and De-Potentializing Newborn Screening
It’s the second week of my rotation with a reproductive health advocacy organization. On my desktop, a grid of squares, icons of faces interspersed with actual faces, populate the screen. They are from the east and west coast, and some United States territories. More than half of them are Black or Latinx. Each of them…
Humanizing Black Patients
Misconceptions and Fallacies on Race and Medical Treatment The Health Humanities is the study of the intersection of health and humanistic disciplines (such as philosophy, religion, literature) fine arts, as well as social science research that gives insight to the human condition (such as history, anthropology, sociology, and cultural studies.)* The Health Humanities use methods…
Grief, Denial, and Racial Violence in the COVID-19 Pandemic (Part III)
Jonathan Chou // For Part I: I become inscrutable to myself For Part II: No sacrifice is excessive III. Finding a relational home In the previous section, I argued that the war metaphor engenders a derealizing self and other relation that precludes the realization of our interdependency and the ethics of nonviolence conditioned by loss….
Grief, Denial, and Racial Violence in the COVID-19 Pandemic (Part II)
Jonathan Chou // For Part I: I become inscrutable to myself For Part III: Finding a relational home II. No sacrifice is excessive If we are to demand that grief be made into a resource for politics, we must demand to be allowed to feel grief, to feel the way in which when I lose…
Grief, Denial, and Racial Violence in the COVID-19 Pandemic (Part I)
Jonathan Chou // This article in three parts is adapted from a critical theory essay that I wrote in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020. It feels strange and even a little unbelievable that I wrote that essay then; the words “manic defense” and “intellectualization” come to mind. It is clear…
Ixcanul (2015) and the Precarity of Health Care in Iximulew (Guatemala)
Tiffany D. Creegan Miller, PhD // Ixcanul (Jayro Bustamante, 2015) is a film about a young Kaqchikel girl who lives with her parents in a humble shack on the edge of a coffee plantation on the slopes of a volcano where she and her father work during harvest seasons. The film was made in close…
Using Narrative Medicine to Improve Public Health Messaging
Marcus Mosley // According to the CDC, 1 in 2 Black/African-American gay, bisexual, same gender loving and other men who have sex with men (MSM) will be diagnosed with HIV in their lifetime.1 In facing such statistical odds, it is imperative that the public health community engage in messaging that not only reaches this group…
Colonial Medicine and Literary Geography: Placelessness in Patrick Deville’s “Plague and Cholera”
Eleanor Grabowski // A tropical vista of lush, green trees, endless mountains, and brilliant sunlight. This idyllic landscape graces the original cover of the Points edition of Patrick Deville’s 2012 novel Peste & Choléra, also sheathed in a bold, red banner announcing it as the winner of the Prix Femina. [1] Yet there is something…