The co-editors of Narrative Medicine: Trauma and Ethics, Anders Juhl Rasmussen and Morten Sodenmann, open their introduction with their goal for this text to “reposition narrative medicine with trauma studies and ethics in a global context” (xv). The book contains 20 chapters from scholars of medicine/healthcare, narrative medicine, trauma-informed care, ethics, literature/writing, philosophy, anthropology, arts…
Tag: Literature
Love Hurts, But Where? A Brief History, from Lovesickness to Limerence
Readers of medieval romance were all too familiar with a common trope of modern romance novels: love is pain. Andreas Capellanus opens his famous twelfth-century treatise on romantic love by calling love “a certain inborn suffering,” a malady most commonly afflicting young noble-born men for whom the sight of (and subsequent meditation upon) his beloved’s…
Book Review: Dysfluent in Fiction by Riley McGuire
When you watch a period drama set in the nineteenth century, how often does a character stutter? Or have a speech impediment? Or not speak at all? In Dysfluent in Fiction: Vocal Disability & Nineteenth-Century Literature, Riley McGuire explores the “literary history of vocal disability in the nineteenth century” through romance novels, children’s literature, detective…
Good Vibes Only?: Medieval Plague Tracts and the Powers (and Limits) of Positive Thinking in a Pandemic
When the first waves of the Black Death struck Europe in the fourteenth century, the last thing likely to be on anyone’s mind was staying cheerful; yet overwhelmingly, this is the advice that contemporary physicians gave. Medieval plague treatises explained that dwelling excessively on the horrors of the plague and thoughts of death could actually…
Reducing Creativity to a Psychiatric Syndrome: On the Pathologization of Female Poets
October 17th, 2024. Public reading of my latest collection of poems, Permettez-moi de palpiter [Allow Me to Pulsate][3]. Open discussion with the audience. […] Suddenly, in a eureka moment, an elderly man speaks up: “You have Cotard’s syndrome. You must have. All the symptoms you describe match up.” This anecdote – whose significance is, in fact, more than anecdotal – gives me the opportunity to revisit a centuries-old tradition in patriarchal discourse of pathologizing female poets.
Sensitive Immersions in Medical Institutions: The French Contemporary Playwright as a Witness to Care, Vulnerability and Precariousness
There is something theatrical about medicine. And there is something medical about theater. It should come as no surprise, then, to observe a very strong trend in the French theatrical landscape, that consists in linking playwrights with medical institutions through what is called immersions programs. But this trend is too significant not to question it.
Prescription Rage: On Teaching Susan Stryker, ‘Frankenstein,’ and Affect in Medical Discourse
My university students are very good at behaving. They say “thank you, Heather,” after every class, write emails with streamlined professionalism, and (almost) always follow instructions. This quarter in my “Medicine in British Popular Culture” seminar course, we’ve committed to loosening that grip on affective constraint. We start class with silly ice-breakers, we welcome deep…
Book Review: Ohio Under Covid – Lessons from America’s Heartland in Crisis
Despite the incredible loss, turmoil, and uncertainty wrought by Covid-19, life has seemingly returned to “normal”. Federal (CDC) and global (UN) health agencies have declared an end to the public health emergency, and many of us have returned to work, gone back to school, and now interact without masks or social distancing. The media no…
To Our Dearly Departed: Intimacy and Grief
As a poet, writing a poem is one of my ways of being in the world, and certainly one of my most effective ways of dealing with complicated emotions. My brother died of metastatic colorectal cancer in early June 2019. Since his death, I have charted time in terms of his death: there is before…
Book Review: Incurables: Relatos de dolencias y males, edited by Oswaldo Estrada
Estrada, Oswaldo, editor. Incurables: Relatos de dolencia y males. Ars Communis Editorial, 2020. 228 pages. ¿En qué país estamos, Agripina? [What country are we in, Agripina?] In his introduction to Incurables: Relatos de dolencias y males, Oswaldo Estrada reminds readers that “las dolencias y males siempre han producido prejuicios, miedos, pánico. Hay males visibles e…