Affecting Healing through Exorcism: Cases from Contemporary Japan
Andrea De Antoni explores experiences of spirit possession and healing through exorcism, by focusing on situated affects and interactions.
Tōjisha Manga: Japan’s Graphic Memoirs of Mental Disability
Yoshiko Okuyama explores the emerging genre of comics in Japan, tōjisha manga, and discusses how these comics illuminate and humanise the otherwise “faceless” people’s invisible tribulations caused by mental disability. Manga, or Japanese comics, is
Poetry and Stimming
In this blog for World Autism Acceptance Week, James McGrath, an autistic poet and academic, advocates the value of “stimming” and explores how it relates to poetry. I dedicate the lipogramatic poem below to
Embodied Vulnerability: Securing Sleep at Japanese Tsunami Shelters
Brigitte Steger explores how an earthquake and tsunami disaster threatens sleep in many ways and what we can learn about sleep health by paying attention to extreme situations.
Writing my way out: A Poetics of Illness and Disability
Reflecting on their pandemic life living in communal halls as a PhD student at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Cat Chong considers their practices involved in continually negotiating a chronic illness within the context of Singapore’s circuit breaker measures.
A Gift of Wellbeing from the Autistic Paradigm
How may individuals with sensory acuity and struggling with fear and anxiety be encouraged to participate more in social activities? Dawn-joy Leong reimagines conducive spaces for all, inspired by natural Autistic ways of coping with and responding to hypersensitivity.
Dementia Narratives in Contemporary German-Language Novels
How does literature question dementia as a category of difference? Monika Leipelt-Tsai explores narratives about dementing diseases in contemporary German-Language literary texts and argues that dementia narratives can disrupt the current order of knowledge
Two Diabetes Cases in 1920s China
Xiao-Yang Gu explores the tension between two different diagnosis methods of diabetes in 1920s China and the consequent changes in the power dynamics in the clinical context.
Illness Narratives in a Fourth-Century Chinese Correspondence
Antje Richter explores the illness narratives in the informal correspondences of Wang Xizhi, the most celebrated of Chinese calligraphers. This essay is adapted from her journal article “The Trouble with Wang Xizhi, Illness and Healing in a Fourth-Century Chinese Correspondence”, co-written with Charles Chace and originally published in T’oung Pao.
My Unexpected Experience of Childbirth
PhD student Jin Meng writes about her experience of developing pre-eclampsia during first child-birth, and reflects on how cultural differences affect her pregnancy experience as a Chinese expat living in the UK.