Editor’s Note: Welcome to our December Issue, which includes original research on a variety of medical humanities topics, and three open access articles. In addition the December issue features a Special Section on Hearing and the Medical Humanities, guest edited by Dr. Bonnie Miller, Musculoskeletal Project Manager, NIHR Nottingham Biomedical Research Centre MSK Communication Lead, […]
Category: Special Issues
June 2019 Special Issue: Psychosomatics
June Special Issue: Biopolitics, psychosomatics, participating bodies Brandy Schillace A New Outlook on Psychosomatics?: June’s Special Issue Brandy Schillace in conversation with Dr. Monica Greco Psychosomatic Subjects and the Agencies of Addiction by Darin Weinberg “Pulling the World In and Pushing it Away”: Participating Bodies and Survival Strategies by Robbie Duschinsky Agency, Embodiment and Enactment […]
June 2018 Special Issue: Pain and its Paradoxes
Before Narrative: Episodic Reading and Representations of Chronic Pain by Sara Wasson Shifting Understandings of Labour Pain in Canadian Medical History by Whitney Wood Adaptive Frameworks of Chronic Pain: Daily Remakings of Pain and Care at a Somali Refugee Women’s Health Centre by Kari Campeau Pain as Performance: Re-Virginisation in Turkey by Hande Güzel […]
When Bodies Think: Panpsychism, Pluralism, Biopolitics
Article Summary by Brandy Schillace In today’s preview, we hear from Dr Martin Savransky, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths University of London. His article, which will appear in our June special issue, explores calls for more participatory forms of medicine and healthcare under what might be described as the ’biopolitical problematic.’ Savransky defines this problematic as […]
December 2018 Special Issue: Medical and Health Humanities in Africa
Special Issue Focus: Medical Humanities in Africa Medical and Health Humanities in Africa – Inclusion, Access, and Social Justice Editorial Critical Orientations for Humanising Health Sciences Education in South Africa by Berna Gerber, Michelle Pentecost, Megan Wainwright and Thomas Cousins Reflections on a Field Across Time and Space: The Emergent Medical and Health Humanities in […]
Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and an Illness-Focused Approach to Care: Controversy, Morality, and Paradox
Article Summary by Michael Sharpe and Monica Greco THIS IS A PREVIEW; the article will appear in the June issue. Please send your commentaries and e-letters based on the printed article. Link coming. In this piece, we explore the controversy concerning the treatment of the illness called Chronic Fatigue Syndrome or CFS, which is sometimes […]
Vital Spaces: Mental Health and the Biopolitics of Enabling Places
Article Summary by Steven Brown and Paula Reavey In this article for June’s special issue, Steven Brown and Paula Reavey discuss “vital spaces” and “mental health.” As a Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology at The Open University, Brown is particularly interested in ‘vulnerable’ populations whose memories are often treated as problematic. Paula Reavey, a Professor […]
A New Outlook on Psychosomatics?: June’s Special Issue
Brandy Schillace in conversation with Dr. Monica Greco What are Biopolitics? And what, for that matter, are psychosomatics? Join us today on the podcast to hear a preview of our June special issue with Monica Greco. Let’s look at an example: ‘Smokers and obese people “soft targets” for NHS savings’, says a surgeon quoted in […]
On Illness and Value: Biopolitics, Psychosomatics, Participating Bodies
Article Summary by Monica Greco In its heyday, around the mid-twentieth century, psychosomatic medicine was heralded as a new science of body/mind relations that held the promise of transforming medicine as a whole. Sixty years on, the field has achieved no more than a respectable position as a research specialism within a model of practice […]
Agency, Embodiment and Enactment in Psychosomatic Theory and Practice
Article Summary by Laurence Kirmayer and Ana Gómez-Carrillo I know so little about the activity of the pineal gland Really, what do I have in common with my body. — Anna Swir (1996, p. 62) This quote from a poem by Anna Swir speaks to the problem of agency in illness experience: What can we […]