by Michelle Pentecost In this commentary I draw on my experience working as a medical doctor and an anthropologist to explore what different disciplinary orientations allow us to ‘see’ in clinical settings. I argue that the anthropological skills of observation, privileging relationship, and of learning to foreground social context, have much to offer for teaching […]
Latest articles
Interview: Nolwazi Mkhwanazi and Emmanuel Babatunde Omobowale, 30th October 2018
Emmanuel Babatunde Omobowale is Nigeria’s first Professor of Literature and Medicine, a position he has held since 2010. From 2012 to 2017 he was also head of the Department of English at the University of Ibadan. Given that Medical Humanities is a nascent field in Africa, I am interested in the Nigerian experience of developing […]
Beyond the Lab: Eh!woza and Knowing Tuberculosis
by Bianca Masuku, Anastasia Koch, Ed Young, Digby Warner and Nolwazi Mkhwanazi The accompanying podcast offers a reflection on Eh!woza, a youth-based community engagement project focusing on tuberculosis (TB). Based in Cape Town, South Africa, Eh!woza functions as an interactive and interrogative platform, contrasting perspectives and concepts of TB as biomedical disease with personal experiences […]
Representing Disability and Development in the Global South
by Leslie Swartz Disability studies scholars have long been interested in accessible and alternative ways of communicating through diverse media including memoir, dance, photography and film. In some ways, these media may helpfully talk back to oppressive forms of representation and provide the space for an authentic self-representation. It is not, however, without problems, and […]
Introducing the MH Monthly Podcast!
LAUNCHING JANUARY 3: Medical Humanities is excited to present our newly re-launched podcast. Launching the first Thursday of every month (with occasional extra content on the second Thursday), this new and vibrant platform will provide conversations and interviews about current events, cutting edge topics, social justice and global crises from a medical and health humanities […]
The Foot: Three Poems
by Kobus Moolman In 2008, while on a residency at the Caversham Centre for Writers and Artists in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, I wrote, in a single sitting late one afternoon, a cycle of six poems about various parts of my body. There was ‘The Hand’, ‘The Foot’, ‘The Foot (the other one)’, ‘The Shoulder’, ‘The […]
Toxic Layering Through Three Disciplinary Lenses: Childhood Poisoning and Street Pesticide use in Cape Town South Africa
by Alison Swartz, Susan Levine, Hanna-Andrea Rother and Fritha Langerman In this article by Swartz, Levine, Rother and Langerman, we see the devastating effects of a hidden killer. Agricultural pesticides repurposed to kill rats and other unwanted pests have led to episodes of child poisoning. While on one hand, the pesticides are used to safeguard […]
Pharmaceuticals and Modern Statecraft in South Africa: The Cases of Opium Thalidomide and Contraception
by Julie Parle, Rebecca Hodes and Thembisa Waetjen In this audio clip, Thembisa Waetjen and Rebecca Hodes discuss their article, co-authored with Julie Parle, which explores a century of pharmaceutical politics through a close historical account of three medicaments. In African contexts, historical research necessarily engages with experiences of colonisation/decolonisation, which have shaped local and […]
Music Composition to Explore Delirium in Hospital: A Johannesburg-Based Study
by Victoria Hume For the last few years I’ve been writing music about delirium – a state often induced by being in hospital and which can be characterised by paranoia, delusion and hallucination. It is immensely common, with a documented prevalence of around 20% in ‘normal’ care[1][2] rising to 87% peak incidence in intensive care.[3][4] […]
Reflections on a Field Across Time and Space: The Emergent Medical and Health Humanities in South Africa
by Victoria Hume and Megan Wainwright In this podcast co-authors Victoria Hume and Megan Wainwright introduce themselves and their article. Both have been involved with medical humanities and related fields in the UK and moved to South Africa in 2014 where they became members of what would eventually become the emergent Medical and Health Humanities […]