Mel Maldonado-Salcedo // OUT OF THIS WORLD Learning that I was an empath changed my life. It wasn’t that this label gave me meaning or purpose; it just simply explained “me.” As an artist, being sensitive is celebrated and somewhat necessary to create. In academia, emotions and feelings should be kept at bay, especially if…
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Bodily Loss in Illness: The Phenomenology of Influenza in Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was
Avril Tynan // It is an uncanny experience to read Moonstone: The Boy Who Never Was in 2021. Written in 2013 by renowned Icelandic author Sjón and translated into English by Victoria Cribb in 2016, the short novel tells the story of a pandemic that surges across Europe and devastates the isolated Icelandic capital. The…
“Let Be Assigned Some Narrow Place Enclosed”: Requesting Accommodations Has Always Been Tricky Business
Pasquale S. Toscano // Two events occurred this week. Surprisingly, they interconnected. First, I was hidden away in my dorm room, studying for PhD qualifying exams next month. Second, I got a ticket for parking in a lot that was designated for “visitors” to Princeton’s campus. Scratch that: a warning, and a warning with no…
Silent Mournings and the Pandemic Blues: Remembering the Dead
Melissa Maldonado-Salcedo // I’d play on loop Joe Walsh’s “Life of Illusion” as I watched the news for days. For the first couple of months, I became fixated on the body count numbers. I have generally maintained an apoplectic attitude towards death (theoretically), knowing full well that this is one of life’s certainties, we die….
A Most Health-Giving Flood: Spatial Promiscuity in E M Forster’s A Passage to India
Bassam Sidiki // E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India (1924) may be one of the most important novels chronicling the spatial logics of segregation during the zenith of the British Raj. However, critical work on colonial space in the novel often ignores the centrality of health and disease in the narrative and how they…
Confronting the Consequences of a Single Story
Sara Press// Every person pictured has consented to having their portraits shared publicly. In 2009, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie gave a TED Talk on “The Danger of a Single Story.”[1] In her talk, Adichie advocates for the importance of storytelling, but cautions against homogenizing complex humans and situations into a single narrative. She explains, “The…
Book Review: Breast Cancer Inside Out: Bodies, Biographies & Beliefs
Phyllisa Deroze // Kimberly R. Myers (editor). Breast Cancer Inside Out: Bodies, Biographies & Beliefs. Peter Lang Press, 2021. ISBN: 9781788747356, $82.95, E-book. It is a rare treasure to find a book that provides such rich and in-depth perspectives into the lives of people experiencing breast cancer. Kimberly R. Myers’ latest book, Breast Cancer Inside…
Book Review: So Much More than a Headache: Understanding Migraine Through Literature
Sam Allen Wright// Kathleen J. O’Shea (editor). So Much More than a Headache: Understanding Migraine Through Literature. Kent State University Press, 2020, 232 pp., ISBN: 978-1606354032 $34.95, paperback As a disability studies and medical humanities scholar, I’d like to think that I know that migraines are more than “just a headache.” But the truth is…
Renaissance Cosmetic ‘Secrets’ in the Age of Home-Beauty: Continuity and Change
Claire Litt // Over the last year the beauty stars of Youtube and Instagram have come face-to-face (or face to mirror, rather) with one of the more superficial spin-off crises caused by the pandemic: the inaccessibility of cosmetic treatments due to the closure of beauty salons. At first glance, it’s a crisis that is literally…
Double Bind. A Collaborative Piece on Care and Its Mixed Perceptions
Pauline Picot // Being taken care of is serious. Being taken care of is the first thing you experience when you come to life. You surrender to another human being and in doing so, you establish your first human relationship. Being taken care of is belonging to someone; being the object of their care. Being…
