Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"This is a landmark volume that sets the standard for any future collection in medical/health humanities. It is by turns authoritative, funny, edgy, creative and personal—sometimes all in one piece.”
-- Thomas R. Cole * Director, McGovern Center for Humanities and Ethics, University of Texas-Houston Medical School *
"It's about time! The field of medical humanities has been waiting for a reader, and this one is it. With an excellent array of essays in appropriate topics by top people in the field, this book should set the standard for the next ten years. It will prove fascinating to undergraduates, graduate students in both the humanities and the health sciences, and to the general public and particularly those who are or will be patients—which of course is everyone."
-- Lennard J. Davis * editor of The Disability Studies Reader *
"This bold, intelligent, and vitally comprehensive collection is a truly interdisciplinary achievement and an indispensible resource.Through twelve judiciously selected thematic clusters, Rutgers’s
Health Humanities Reader consolidates this new subfield by capturing both the complexity and excitement of health humanities scholarship. An essential tool with practical applications both inside and outside the classroom." -- Andrea Charise, PhD * assistant professor of health studies, University of Toronto, Scarborough *
"[This book] consists of nearly 50 chapters, some of which deal with classic medical humanities topics, such as the notions of health and disease and the theory of the body. The majority of the book centers on more contemporary—some would say postmodern—issues, such as gender and sexuality, disability, and aging. Recommended." * Choice *
Table of ContentsPART I: DISEASE AND ILLNESS Chapter 1 Being a Good Story: The Humanities as Therapeutic Practice Chapter 2 Illuminating the It, Thee, and We of Disease and Illness:The Metamorphosis and Related Works Chapter 3 “This Weird, Incurable Disease”: Competing Diagnoses in the Rhetoric of Morgellons Chapter 4 My Quest for Health PART II: DISABILITY Chapter 5 Disability in Two Doctor Stories Chapter 6 Music and Disability Chapter 7 American Narrative Films and Disability: An Uneasy History Chapter 8 Standout PART III: DEATH AND DYING Chapter 9 When the Doctor Is Not God: The Impact of Religion on Medical Decision-Making at the End of Life Chapter 10 Postmodern Death and Dying: A Literary Analysis Chapter 11 Second-Degree Block: Poem and Commentary PART IV PATIENT-PROFESSIONAL RELATIONSHIPS Chapter 12 Social Studies: The Humanities, Narrative, and the Social Context of the Patient-Professional Relationship Chapter 13 Humanities and the Medical Home Chapter 14 Occupational Medicine PART V: THE BODY Chapter 15 The Virtues of the Imperfect Body Chapter 16 Seeing Bodies in Pain Chapter 17 Public Fetuses Chapter 18 More Body: A Performance for Five (or More) Bodies PART VI: GENDER AND SEXUALITY Chapter 19 Adult Intake Form Chapter 20 What Is Sex For? or, The Many Uses of the Vag Chapter 21 “I Always Prefer the Scissors”: Isaac Baker Brown and Feminist Histories of Medicine Chapter 22 Comics in the Health Humanities: A New Approach to Sex and Gender Education Chapter 23 I Am Gula, Hear Me Roar PART VII: RACE AND CLASS Chapter 24 Listening as Freedom: Narrative, Health, and Social Justice Chapter 25 Race and Mental Health Chapter 26 Law’s Hand in Race, Class, and Health Inequities: On the Humanities and the Social Determinants of Health Chapter 27 Dark Rooms of Our Souls PART VIII: AGING Chapter 28 “Old Age Isn’t a Battle, It’s a Massacre”: Reading Philip Roth’s Everyman Chapter 29 “Do You Remember Me?”: Construction of Alzheimer’s Disease in Literature and Film Chapter 30 Love in the Time of Dementia
PART IX MENTAL ILLNESS Chapter 31 Narrating Our Sadness, with a Little Help from Humanities Chapter 32 Teaching Narratives of Mental Illness Chapter 33 Community Psychiatry and the Medical Humanities Chapter 34 Culpability PART X SPIRITUALITY AND RELIGION Chapter 35 Rites of Bioethics Chapter 36 Health and Humanities: Spirituality and Religion Chapter 37 Scientia Mortis and the ArsMoriendi: To the Memory of Norman Chapter 38 Meditations of an Anesthesiologist: Poem and Commentary PART XI: SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY Chapter 39 Andromeda’s Futures: A Story of Humanities, Technology, Science, and Art Chapter 40 Knowing and Seeing: Reconstructing Frankenstein Chapter 41 A Brief History of Love: A Rationale for the History of Epidemics Chapter 42 Calcedonies PART XII HEALTH PROFESSIONS EDUCATION Chapter 43 Teaching Autism through Naturalized Narrative Ethics: Closing the Divide between Bioethics and Medical Humanities Chapter 44 Courting Discomfort in an Undergraduate Health Humanities Classroom Chapter 45 The Medical Humanities in Medical Education: Toward a Medical Aesthetics of Resistance Chapter 46 In Defense of Cheaper Stethoscopes
