Advancing Medical Posthumanism Through Twenty-First Century American Poetry

Tana Jean Welch is a poet and scholar of medical humanities and contemporary American poetry. She is Associate Professor of Medical Humanities at the Florida State University College of Medicine where she teaches courses in literature, writing, and humanities and serves as Director of the Chapman Humanities and Arts in Medicine Program. Her critical work has been published in MELUS, The Journal of Ecocriticism, Literature and Medicine, and Academic Medicine. She is also the author of the poetry collections In Parachutes Descending (2024) and Latest Volcano (2016).

“Tana Jean Welch inhabits a space where poetry, posthumanism, and medicine converge to show how poetry can provide a posthumanist perspective that activates an ethical understanding of what it means to be ‘human’ in the world. … it is an important and timely book that problematizes how we relate to violent events around us.” (Shahira A. Hathout, The British Society for Literature and Science, bsls.ac.uk, August 30, 2024)

• 1. “Poems are Bodies that Remind Us We Have Bodies”—Poetry, Medical Posthumanism, and Ethical Practice.- 2. Entangled Species / Entangled Health: The Inclusive Poetics of Juliana Spahr.- 3. Health Inequity, Structural Racism, and The Trans-Corporeal Ethics of Claudia Rankine’s Investigative Poetics.- 4. Shared Suffering and Chronic Vulnerability in the Poetry of Brian Teare.- 5. Global Health Equity, Community Building, and the Innovative Poetics of Hong and Perez.- 6. Conclusion: Affirmative Medicine: Queer Figurations and Porous Boundaries.