Co-editors:

Benjamin Dalton (Lancaster University)
Chase Ledin (University of Edinburgh)
Maurice Nagington (University of Manchester)

Background and Context

The Queer Medical Humanities is a diverse, developing field at the intersections of the Medical Humanities and Queer Studies. Many strands of queer theory engage with medical and healthcare contexts in new and exciting ways. This includes not only critiquing the power structures historically implicated within medical institutions but also approaching healthcare contexts as generative sites for imagining queer futures and new modes of care (Dalton and Ledin 2024).

As Lance Wahlert and Autumn Fiester suggest in the introduction to their Special Issue of the Journal of Medical Humanities “Queer in the Clinic” (2013), the work of Michel Foucault, who is widely seen to be one of the founding theorists of contemporary Queer Theory, was inextricably bound with a thinking of the clinic and the biomedical. In works such as Birth of the Clinic (1963) and The History of Sexuality (1976), Foucault developed a critical approach to medicine and healthcare which dislodged it from the self-made claims of benevolence and instead highlighted the ways in which power operated through the professionals, institutions, and ideologies of medicine to control subjects in contemporary society.

This legacy continues strongly in contemporary continental philosophy but has been nuanced and developed. For instance, the work of trans philosopher and queer theorist Paul B. Preciado carries the baton from Foucault in his exploration of how power has come to be manifested not only via institutions, but the biomolecular machinery of everyday life. Most recently, Preciado’s residency at the Pompidou Centre in Paris in 2020, “Nouvelle histoire de la sexualité” (“A New History of Sexuality”) explores the new incarnations of the biopolitical management of bodies and modes of queer resistance and (re)invention in contemporary times. On a different note, Maurice Nagington (2023) has suggested that one of the central contributions of queer theory needs to be not only improving the lives of gender and sexually diverse individuals, but also about teaching wider society how to critically approach the hegemonic power structures inherent in medicine.

By interrogating and deconstructing these structures, queer theory provides valuable insights and methodologies for understanding and challenging the normative frameworks that govern healthcare practices and policies. Such approaches align with those currently being explored in the Queer Medical Humanities Network at Lancaster University (founded in 2023 and led by Benjamin Dalton), which fosters a broad coalition of researchers working at the intersections of sociology, anthropology, health sciences, public health, arts, languages, cultural studies, architecture, design history, gender and sexuality studies, and philosophy, among others, united in their exploration of how queerness intrinsically questions and disrupts traditional power structures and cultural hegemonies, challenging binary thinking and norms prevalent in medical and healthcare sectors.

The Special Issue

This special issue on “Queer Medical Humanities” undertakes to mobilize radical, transformational, and reparative approaches to health and medicine at the intersections of the Medical and Health Humanities and Queer Studies. The special issue has at its core the following objectives:

1. Interdisciplinary Exploration: To bring together scholars from diverse disciplines to explore the intersections of queerness and medicine
2. Innovative Methodologies: To highlight and promote innovative methodologies advancing the study of queer medical humanities
3. Critical Examination: To critically examine how queer identities and experiences are shaped by and interact with medical practices, policies, and discourses
4. Challenging Norms: To deconstruct normative frameworks within healthcare and the humanities that marginalize queer bodies and identities
5. Global Perspectives: To incorporate international perspectives, recognizing diverse experiences and challenges faced by queer individuals in different cultural and medical contexts
6. Critical pedagogy: To demonstrate how queer theory can teach wider society to critically approach and deconstruct hegemonic power structures in medicine, fostering a more inclusive and equitable healthcare system

We invite proposals from researchers for original research articles which address, but need not be limited to, the following themes:

• The history and evolution of health practices and policies, particularly those innovated by queer communities, and the lessons which can be learned from these
• The potential for intergenerational learning and support, with a particular view on past and contemporary forms of activism
• Intersectionality and the experiences of queer individuals in healthcare systems
• Queer perspectives on kinship and chosen families, and the impacts this may have on care structures, and professional responsibilities
• The physical healthcare environment, how it may shape experiences of healthcare, and how it may be (re)designed in relation to queer perspectives
• The impact of cultural and societal norms on queer health, and how queer sub-cultural norms may offer novel and radical perspectives for care innovations
• Queer methodologies in medical humanities research, particularly the use of film and art processes to elicit and represent research findings
• How queer theory can inform and transform broader medical and healthcare practices
• Queer and LGBTQIA+ experiences of healthcare environments and architectures; and queer healthcare design
• Decolonial approaches to the Queer Medical Humanities
• Intersections between Queer Medical Humanities, Critical Disability Studies, and Crip Theory
• Neurodivergence and neuroqueer perspectives

We invite contributions from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. Potential disciplines could include, but are not limited to:

• Sociologists
• Medical anthropologists
• Cultural studies scholars
• Gender and/or sexuality scholars
• Historians
• Healthcare academics, practitioners and policymakers
• Architects and urban planners
• Critical disability studies
• Activists and community organizers
• Artists, videographers, literary scholars
• Auto-ethnographers

Please send abstracts of up to 300 words for proposals for articles of between 5,000-9,000 words by Wednesday 15^th December 2024 to all three of the following addresses:

• Dr Benjamin Dalton: b.dalton@lancaster.ac.uk
• Dr Chase Ledin: Chase.Ledin@ed.ac.uk
• Dr Maurice Nagington: Maurice.nagington@manchester.ac.uk

We will then submit a full proposal featuring selected abstracts to the journal Medical Humanities. It is expected that the publication of the Special Issue will be 2027, and articles will be published online first ahead of the full issue.