A few days ago—or maybe it was weeks, time after all has been out of joint lately—my colleague Tim Morton Tweeted something interesting. It seems since to have been deleted, so I’ll have to paraphrase it from a memory whose reliability has already been called into question. But Morton said something like this: the humanities…
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Pause and Ambiguity: Vermeer’s Woman With a Balance
I could say, “I wanted to see the Vermeers,” but, in truth, I needed to see them. And so, early on a chilly December morning, I passed through rural highways in West Virginia and Maryland until suburbia gave way to our nation’s capitol. Driving in D.C., never my favorite as someone now used to…
The Anesthetic Soundscape
Written in collaboration with Dr. Megan Hunt, an anesthesiology resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The Anesthetic Soundscape Prelude The anesthesiologist approaches the patient’s bedside, introduces herself, and asks, “Have you had surgery before?” She listens to the lively rhythms of the heart and lungs, seeking out quiet clues of any conditions…
Ozempic Face, Unmerited Body
“She’s definitely got Ozempic face.” This phrase, incomprehensible to most even as recently as a year ago, has been popping up more and more on social media and in the tabloids. Semaglutide, an antidiabetic drug, is most known by the two brand names under which it is sold: Ozempic, approved for type 2 diabetes…
The Changing Narrative Medicine Workshop: Finding New Uses for and New Ways to Use Narrative Medicine
The Changing Narrative Medicine Workshop: Finding New Uses for and New Ways to Use Narrative Medicine The narrative medicine workshop, as a structure and method, differentiates narrative medicine as an applied discipline within the larger field of the health humanities. In the narrative medicine Master’s programs at Columbia University and the University of Southern…
Degraded Life, Euthanasia, and the Health Humanities
Canada has recently been at the forefront of a global interest in liberalizing policies around Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID), or the legalization of euthanasia. What has made Canada’s approach unique, even compared to familiar northern European champions of the practice, such as Belgium and the Netherlands, is its availability to people not suffering from…
Life Time in the New Year
Life Time in the New Year What can we expect in a time of unrelenting climate crisis? In this warm winter in this new year, I am reflecting on colloquial intersections between ideas about time, health, and environment. I include a header photo depicting a discarded Christmas tree as one way of evoking these ideas. …
TikTok and the Politics of Self-Diagnosis
Sara Press// Last spring, one of my third-year English students told me that she was in the process of seeking an ADHD diagnosis. This in and of itself was not surprising, since ADHD is fairly common. What was surprising was that this student had discovered her potential diagnosis on TikTok. Apparently, she is not alone….
The Elusiveness of Photography to Convey Animal Suffering During the Early 20th Century
“Facts that need no comment”, states the caption of a series of images that illustrate the chapter on vivisection in a naturist handbook published in 1915 in Montevideo, Uruguay (p. 81). It was an encyclopaedic treatise on vegetarianism and natural medicine that offered theoretical and practical articles and included illustrated instructions for doing gymnastics, taking…
“Culture and Medicine: Critical Readings in the Health and Medical Humanities”
Synapsis is thrilled to announce the publication of a new book, Culture and Medicine: Critical Readings in the Health and Medical Humanities, just released from Bloomsbury. The book is edited by our editors-in-chief, Rishi Goyal and Arden Hegele, and it features essays by writers of Synapsis. Read an interview with Goyal and Hegele about the book and Synapsis here. The book…