BLACK FEMINIST HEALING ARTS: A MAKING OF PEDAGOGY AND PRAXIS . . . – the inception – It was Summer 2020, at the height of the pandemic, amidst erupting waves of Black grief. And there I was, sittin’ up in my room, preparing to teach my very first university course amidst a global…
Category: Race and Ethnicity
Invisible Women: Research, Erasure, and Racism
This paper is a brief consideration of how the construction of research, such as using whiteness as a reference point, can be imbued with racism, resulting in the erasure of health issues in certain communities. I will use body image/ideal research as an example of how research practices embedded with racism can lead to…
Kaqchikel Maya Hearts
Kaqchikel Maya Hearts Throughout history, the heart has long captivated attention. From heartbreak to heart attacks, there is a range of conditions deriving from the heart, encompassing a wide array of physiological and emotional states. Turning our attention to language, the heart is often used in emotional health expressions. However, moving beyond Western contexts, the…
“Venereal Peril”: ‘Controlled’ Prostitution and French Regulationism After 1945
Penicillin and the French regulationist system The advent of penicillin in the 1930s marked a significant breakthrough that revolutionized the therapeutic landscape for diverse bacterial infections, including those causing venereal diseases (Brandt, Jones 1999). The use of penicillin during World War Two led to a decline in the incidence of syphilis and allowed for more…
Structural Pain: How the Humanities Help Reveal the “Hidden Figures” in Total Pain
As a palliative care clinician, I spend many moments throughout the week sitting in silence with patients, absorbing stories of discomfort and overwhelm, resisting platitudes, which I know can cause more harm than good. Remaining quiet requires training and discipline. “I always want to fill the space with words,” said a physician assistant student who…
Are These “Truths” Self-Evident: An Unsettling of the Terms That Define Us Part I
Human is not a neutral term. It is laced with socio-historical positionality that masquerades as neutral, universal, and even innocuous. What exactly do we mean when we invoke terms like human, humanity, or any other derivative? Suppose humanity is, in fact, universal, neutral, and innocuous. Why can people be rendered inhumane, commit crimes against humanity,…
Equitable Representation in Medical Textbooks
Erasure is the act of denying or refusing to acknowledge that people’s race and lived experiences in America differ through socioeconomic, historical, political, and legal factors. This concept of colorblindness, also known as erasure, is counterproductive when it results in the inability to recognize the need to include diverse representation and instead results in the…
Chinatown Poem
— “Chinatown Poem” is a cento poem written using language taken from billboards, commercial shop signs, advertisements, and other elements of the linguistic landscape of Boston’s Chinatown neighborhood. The poem explores Chinatown as both a site of diasporic cultural production and a space where racist tropes and stereotypes about Asian people circulate and…
Coffee with a Colleague: Bioethicist Keisha Ray, PhD
Keisha Ray, PhD, is an Associate Professor of medical humanities and bioethics at McGovern Medical School in Houston, Texas. She is also an associate editor at the American Journal of Bioethics. Sarah L. Berry // This interview series features educators, scholars, artists, and healthcare providers whose work is vital to the growth of the health…
Representations and Discourses of Vietnamese and North African Women in French Colonial Postcards, Part II
Clothing in Postcards of Algerian and Moroccan Women In many ways, garments were a marker of disparity between Vietnamese and North African colonial portraiture. In Algeria and Morocco, postcards were often organized around the veiled—or rather, unveiled—woman, a theme central to Orientalist art and photography. Colonialist photographers, such as Jean Geiser, Rudolf Lehnert and Ernst…