Medical & Health Humanities – serie

Situated at the intersection between medical humanities, aging studies, autobiographical studies, disability studies and ethic studies, this book explores the fascination of centenarians' autobiographies for humanites research. It can be argued that the growing presence of centenarians' autobiographies on book markets across the globe may by rooted in the public's desire for positive images of aging, in contrast to the image of inevitable decay.

Alchemy is popularly viewed as a secret way of turning worthless base metal into gold, and then a precursor to modern chemistry. This is often taken as a metaphor for psychological development. This book describes an innovative "third way" for both the education and exercise of an alchemical imagination that embraces both material matters and psychological insight: alchemy as lyrical poetics, or the intensive production of embodied metaphor. Alchemy here is viewed as an immanent set of metaphor-driven "best practices" for indwelling complex and contradictory earthly matters in a sensual, artistic and humane manner. Or, again, it describes best psychotherapeutic practice. Alchemy is read not as a medium for "personal growth", but optimal co-existence with the natural world. It is an eco-logical rather than ego-logical project with deep aesthetic concerns (education of the senses in close noticing) and political intentions (a democracy of worldly things). The book echoes post-Freudian developments in psychoanalysis that avoid the mysticism of symbol systems to work rather with everyday signs and linguistic registers such as embodied metaphors, keeping the focus on known and sensed phenomena rather than abstractions.

This book highlights the importance of global Anglophone literature in global health humanities, shaping perceptions of health issues in the Global South and among minorities in the Global North. Using twelve novels, it explores the historical, political, sociocultural, ethical, and environmental aspects of health by analyzing the experiences of characters who suffer from infectious diseases, mental disorders, or disabilities, and who seek holistic healing practices.

Transplant practices are discussed in the medical realm, in fictional texts and in popular advertisement. Yet how do these sectors intersect and influence each other? How can the accounts of surgeons invested in transplant practice be brought into conversation with fictional voices? Future T/Issues positions transplantation at the intersection of natural science and the humanities and adds to the discussion of organ transplantation by focusing on one specific aspect that is commonly overlooked: the idea of speculation. By engaging with speculative fiction in conversation with life writing, it contributes to a more thorough understanding of transplantation as a cultural practice, showcasing that transplantation is imagined as part of the future both within and beyond the literary sphere. Hereby, this book establishes the relationship between literary and medical narratives as reciprocal, in effect eroding boundaries between the life sciences and literary studies. As an interdisciplinary endeavor, this study contributes to literary studies, specifically to the fields of life writing, speculative fiction, and young adult fiction, it offers insights for the study of transplantation in the popular realm and adds to the medical humanities.