Cover Image: My Aunts by Melissa Maldonado-Salcedo 2021. 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,…
Tag: trauma
The Epigenetics of Trauma
Diana Rose Newby // The growth of the memory culture may, indeed, be a symptom of a need for inclusion in a collective membrane forged by a shared inheritance of multiple traumatic histories and the individual and social responsibility we feel toward a persistent and traumatic past … (Hirsch 111) What does it mean to…
What we talk about when we talk about conversion disorder
Sneha Mantri // This three-part essay is an examination of “nervous illness” as a reaction to the rising tide of rationalist scientific development in Western society, focusing on three distinct periods of technological change. In part 1, I examined the Enlightenment’s increasingly mechanistic view of body and illness; in part 2, I turned to the…
“Let’s Play!”: The Use of Play Therapy in Child Healthcare
James Belarde// “To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and play with it.” -Charlie Chaplin Children are the definition of potential. While having dinner on a first date at a vegetarian restaurant, the conversation turned to my gross undereducation in the field of vegetables and an abhorrent overeducation in the field…
The Theatre of Presidential Cruelty from American Psycho to The House that Jack Built
Lauren A. Mitchell // By way of a preface, I’ve spent the last couple of weeks lingering over the subject of this post about how Donald Trump has been an inspiration for a number of violent imaginary characters. When I originally put it up, it was right before news of the Pittsburgh Tree of…
Vampire Dearest: Maternal Bodies and the Female Vampire
Livia Arndal Woods // Consider Bram Stoker’s Lucy in her vampiric form: she holds a small child “strenuously to her breast.” Once the virginal victim of nocturnal bedroom attacks, Lucy is now a sexualized threat striking a monstrously maternal pose. The child is not Lucy’s baby but her meal. Nonetheless, this gothic scene is suggestive…
Towards a Meditation on Pain
How do people talk about and understand lived experiences of pain? For the past year, I have immersed myself in the world of qualitative research into lived experiences of trauma, including in relation to amputation, a large part of which is the experience, management and understanding of pain. Some of this research has been motivated…
The Unseen Trauma of Medical Illness
Bernard P. Chang In the aftermath of life-threatening events, such as heart attacks or strokes, many survivors are consumed by protracted medical evaluations, treatment regimens and lifestyle changes—all with the intention of reducing disease progression or the appearance of future medical events related to the initial bodily threat. The massive medical complex underlying our modern…