Steven Rhue // Narrative Art and the Politics of Health stands out as wonderful collection of essays that unites disparate stories of health and wellbeing entangled with in the politics of medicine and healing. Brooks and Blanchette have carefully organized this assortment of writings in three thematic divisions. Part 1 of the volume concerns institutional narratives that confront…
Tag: Disability
“Making the Poem Physical”: A Talk With Kamil Guenatri, A Disabled Performance Artist
Pauline Picot // Kamil Guenatri is a performance artist. He first started working as a computer engineer before changing his course entirely at the age of 25, when he decided to practice performance art. Since 2010, he has been creating and presenting his work in France and abroad.
Emotions as Ethnography: The Story Doctor’s Toolbox
Melissa Maldonado-Salcedo// I am always “in my feelings.” I say this unapologetically, and knowing that some Latina women are rendered in popular culture as lacking control of their emotions and impulses. The overlap between these representations and my ethnographic life does not escape me. Empathy, “my gut,” memories, and emotions are all my critical tools…
‘Laughing At’: The Exploitation of Disability as Comedic Entertainment in Pre-Industrial Europe
James Belarde // “They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me.” –Nathaniel Lee, 17th century dramatist, after being committed to Bethlem Hospital In late June 1340, the members of the French royal court found themselves in a tricky situation. France’s navy had just been decimated in the Battle…
Little House in the Hood: Save the Bees, call me Mel
Mel Maldonado-Salcedo // What’s in a Name? I was born in the 1980s, an era filled with excess. Perhaps this is the reason I have always struggled with moderation. My generation was defined by drugs, MTV, and Melissas. From grade school to high school, I was one of a few Melissas in each classroom. For this…
“Novum Corpus, Pristina Mens”: Pandemic Forms of Weight Loss, or an Apology in Seven Cantos
Pasquale S. Toscano // Dat sparso capiti vivacis cornus cervi, Dat spatium collo summasque cacuminat aures Cum pedibusque manus, cum longis bracchia mutat Cruribus et velat maculoso vellere corpus; Additus et pavor est. … … ut vero vultus et cornua vidit in unda, ‘me miserum!’ dicturus erat: vox nulla secuta est; Ingemuit: vox illa fuit,…
Collectively Holding Space: A Reflection
Amala Poli // I find, when I write, I don’t want to write well-made scenes, narratives that flow, structures that give a sense of wholeness and balance, plays that feel intact. Intact people should write intact plays with sound narratives built of sound scenes that unfold with a sense of dependable cause and effect; solid…
Testing for Normalcy: Amniocentesis and Disability in the 1970s
John A. Carranza // “2. Pregnancy is usually a happy time. Most newborn infants are normal and healthy. Even so, parents often wonder if their unborn child will be normal.”[1] By the late 1970s, reproductive decisions and the sense of normality were challenged and redefined by the women’s liberation and disability rights movement, among others….
Redefining the Field: A Critical Review of the 2019 International Health Humanities Consortium
Maryam Golafshani // Though this was my first time at the Health Humanities Consortium’s international conference, which just celebrated its fifth year, I was struck by the sense that a pervasive shift is taking place in the field. The scholarship at this year’s conference strongly reflected how the health humanities are expanding beyond the field’s…
Special Issue Review: Chemistry, Disability, and Frankenstein
Diana Rose Newby // Chemistry, Disability, and Frankenstein, theme issue of Literature and Medicine, vol. 36, no. 2, fall 2018. In her introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein, Mary Shelley concludes with well wishes for her creation’s second life: “And now, once again, I bid my hideous progeny go forth and prosper” (25). Today,…
