Lunar Chronicles: Belief and Bodies in Pain
In this highly personal piece Deepsikha Dasgupta recounts the intersection between lunar phases and the arthritic pain experienced by women in her family.
Practice Research with Chronic Illness, Part 2
A series of disparate discomforts: Jane Hartshorn continues her reflections (see part 1) on the challenges of conducting creative writing practice as research in the medical humanities while living with the chronic illness she
A Series of Disparate Discomforts: Practice Research with Chronic Illness
Jane Hartshorn, who started a practice-based PhD in poetry in 2018, reflects on the tension between leaning into the chaos of chronic illness and attempting to accurately reflect it. In writing about my lived
Olfactory Overload: Knowing the Neurodivergent Nose
Kim Crowder recounts, discusses, and explores neurodiversity and a heightened sensitivity to smell. Olfactory: Of or pertaining to the sense of smell; concerned with smelling. The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. My first post-pandemic train
The Radical Potential of Sickness Stories
In Part 2 of their series exploring chronic illness narratives (see Part 1 on ‘refusal of resolution’ here), Char Heather considers the radical potential of sickness stories to crip and to queer what is
Writing the Asylum
Gillean McDougall writes about a new collaborative project bringing together writers and artists with the medical archive A largely forgotten archive The former Gartnavel Royal Asylum stands in parkland in Glasgow’s West End, the
Reproductive Trauma Narratives from Rural India
Manali Karmakar draws on the illness narratives of three women from rural India to showcase how caste, gender, and sociocultural and geographical location strongly shape reproductive health and well-being. “Logicoscientific knowledge attempts to illuminate
Refusing Resolution? Exploring Unresolveable Illness and Story Endings
Charlotte Heather explains why chronic illness stories can productively trouble standard ideas about narrative arc and resolution. Lazard wrote that chronic illness ‘experiences are difficult to narrativize: they have no arc’ (Lazard 2013) and
Studying Persuasion in Health and Medical Contexts
Hillary A. Ash explains the importance of the study of rhetoric in the medical humanities as part of our ‘MedHums 101’ series. At first glance, it may not be readily apparent how pervasively persuasion
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.