Special Anniversary Issue on the Future of Medical Humanities Medical Humanities-BMJ is pleased to announce a call for proposals for a special anniversary issue marking 25 years of publication, on the theme “The Future of Medical Humanities.” Medical humanities is an interdisciplinary field welcoming diverse approaches and methodologies that center the “human” in medical practices […]
Latest articles
CFP: Seeking Blog Content for Medical Humanities-BMJ
We are seeking high quality blog posts on a broad range of issues related to health humanities. We especially look for submissions on themes related to social justice, global outreach, and inclusivity. We believe that the work of medical humanities is deeply entrenched in ethics, so we encourage reflections on our moral obligations toward beings enmeshed […]
CFP: Contribute to BMJ’s Medical Humanities Journal!
I’m Brandy Schillace, Editor in Chief of BMJ’s Medical Humanities Journal, an official journal of the Institute of Medical Ethics. We’ve spent the last four years working toward social justice, accessibility, global outreach, and inclusivity. We’ve welcomed research and writing from the LGBTQ and disability community, and included podcasts with activists and others dedicated to […]
‘What’s a D and C Between Friends?’ Space, Intimacy and the Medicalisation of Unmotherhood in Modernist Literature
Article Summary by Kate Schnur This article explores the representations of different experiences of “unmotherhood” are represented in literature of the twentieth century. As this special issue explores the conditions of modernity that shape maternity, I ask how are the conditions of living outside of motherhood similarly shaped by those same conditions? I look to […]
“Our Culture is Changing Its Mind”: Assisted Dying and the Value of Old Age
Blog by James Aaron Green In a recent Times article, the columnist Matthew Parris argues that it is time to lift the taboo on assisted dying in cases of “extreme senescence.”1 This call for what amounts to voluntary euthanasia—for each person to recognise ‘“Your time is up”’—was “widely condemned” for its reductive, dehumanizing verdict upon […]
‘Mrs. Don’t Care’: Refusing Modern Black Motherhood in Nella Larsen’s Quicksand
Article Summary by Matty Hemming This essay offers an analysis of Nella Larsen’s Harlem Renaissance novel, Quicksand, within the context of Larsen’s career as a nurse. I consider what thinking about the author’s experience of public health nursing and nurse training in the early twentieth-century does to our understanding of her novel’s portrayal of reproductive […]
Smoothies, Bone Broth, and Fitspo: The Historicity of TikTok Postpartum Bounce-Back Culture
Article Summary by Bethany L. Johnson, Margaret M. Quinlan and Audrey Curry Have you ever implemented dietary, wellness or health advice from a TikTok video? You probably aren’t alone. In this study, we explore the health, wellness, and fitness content on TikTok with a focus on a particular phase in life—the postpartum period, and we […]
LivingBodiesObjects and the Tragedy at Bhopal
Podcast by Clare Barker and Lynn Wray The 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India, is recognised as the world’s worst industrial disaster. It has killed around 25,000 people to date, and the health of thousands of families in Bhopal continues to be affected by a groundwater supply contaminated by toxic chemicals from the now abandoned […]
Motherhood, Medicine and Magazines in Interwar Vienna: The Case of Die Mutter (The Mother, 1924–1926)
Article Summary by Alys X. George Whether we admit it or not, these days we all rely on “Doctor Google” for information about our bodies, health, and medical issues. But what did people do in the past? This article investigates how Austrian women in the 1920s accessed medical knowledge about (impending) motherhood. A grassroots network […]
From the Womb to the World: A Study of Pregnancy Narratives by Celebrity Moms in India
Article Summary by Pratyusha Pramanik and Ajit K Mishra This article delves into how celebrity moms in India are crafting their public images by sharing their pregnancy experiences publicly. Even though motherhood is highly glorified in India, women often have little control over their choice to become a mother and how to become a mother. […]
The Right Time: Women, Medicine and Maternal Age in 1980s Aotearoa New Zealand
Article Summary by Charlotte Greenhalgh ‘The Right Time’ draws on unique, grassroots survey research on New Zealand women’s decisions to delay childbearing and become parents after the age of 30. These 1980s studies and their archived research papers spotlight participants’ determination to time childbearing to coincide with financial stability, strong romantic partnerships, and sufficient personal […]
“The Highest in Each Class was a Twilight Baby”: Scientific Motherhood, Twilight Sleep and the Eugenics Movement in McClure’s Magazine
Article Summary by Jerika Sanderson and Heather A. Love This article investigates the depiction of twilight sleep in McClure’s Magazine. Twilight sleep was a drug cocktail and medical procedure popularized during the mid-1910s in the United States as a way to reduce or eliminate women’s pain during childbirth; it became an important symbol of agency […]