Source: (Mortillaro) During the worldwide COVID-19 shutdown in 2020, the media disseminated satellite images of disappearing clouds of pollution over countries like China and Italy. The accompanying copy drew on words like “surreal,” “striking” (Mortillaro), as well as “unprecedented” (Hickey). The headlines sensationalized the images. Online media posts implied a connection between the lack of…
Category: Theory and Practice
The Geographic Self
The Communication of Pain In her book The Body in Pain, Scarry discusses the way that pain “shatters language” and threatens to be “unsharable” (4,5). She describes how pain belongs to an internal geography, when one hears about another person’s physical pain, the events happening within the interior of that person’s body may seem to…
Beware the Cultural Beatification of Nurses
A few months in to our first year of nurse training at separate hospitals, my friend and I met for lunch. “I’d always assumed that nurses were lovely people,” my friend lamented as we swapped stories on the divisive hierarchy, personal politics and odd behaviour of some of the nurses we had encountered. Our education…
On Citational Justice
In my course rotation, I typically teach my introduction to Health Humanities and Disability Studies, Literature, Medicine, and Culture, at least once a year. Part of the work of the survey is to expose students to the evolving methodologies in these fields, as well as to the multitude of primary texts often understudied or studied…
Ulysses Contracts and the “Authentic Self”
“‘In flowery meads the sportive Sirens play, Touch the soft lyre, and tune the vocal lay; Me, me alone, with fetters firmly bound, The gods allow to hear the dangerous sound. Hear and obey; if freedom I demand, Be every fetter strain’d, be added band to band.’” In the above, Odysseus addresses his crew as…
Considering the Objectivity of Medical Images
If all we need is to see the body to know it, what do we know? Throughout time, western medicine has sought to see deeper and deeper into the human body. Science has sought to develop technologies that help make the body visible, from X-rays to MRIs and CAT scans to microscopic imaging of bacteria…
Let’s Talk About Sex: ‘90s Nostalgia, Hip-Hop, and Creating a Safe Space in Clinical Care
A few weeks ago, I cared for a young woman who came in to get an IUD check and be screened for sexually transmitted infections. She sat on the exam table, squeezing the vinyl covering between her fingers and palms, crossing her legs at the ankles. Her lashes were long and fake, curled up like…
On Course Revision
Part of the privilege of junior leave is having a crucial opportunity for pause and reflection after the first few years of being on the tenure track. As I witness my fellow colleagues return to the classroom, many with new special topics courses, courses they’ve never taught before, or new versions of bread-and-butter courses they’ve…
“I am your Doctor”: a prelude to power in medicine
In my acclimatization to being a resident, there are a lot of things that have taken some getting used to. The first is claiming a greater responsibility over patient care than one had during medical school: when I sign an order now, it becomes reality—a lab is drawn, an EKG is performed, a consult to…
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…