Routledge Studies in Health Humanities – serie

Performing Shame shows how simulations of shame by North American writers and artists have the power to resist its withering influence.Chapter 1 analyses the projects’ key terms: shame, performance, and empathy. Chapter 2 probes the book’s key terms in light of a real-world study of an "empathy device" that aims to teach the public what it feels like to be disabled. Chapter 3 analyses how theatre intervenes in the practice of medicine via standardized patient actors who engage in role play to enhance medical students’ empathy for patients coping with shame. Chapter 4 moves from the clinic to the street to examine how The Raging Grannies’ public performances contest ageist constructions of older women’s bodies and desires. Chapter 5 shifts further from the bedside to the book by exploring Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home, which challenges the shame projected onto homosexuals. Bringing the study full circle, the final chapter offers close readings of the stories of Alice Munro; like empathy devices, her texts restage scenes of shame to undo its malevolent spell.This book will be of interest to scholars in theatre and performance studies, health humanities, gender studies, queer studies, literary studies, disability studies, and affect studies.

Performing Shame shows how simulations of shame by North American writers and artists have the power to resist its withering influence.Chapter 1 analyses the projects’ key terms: shame, performance, and empathy. Chapter 2 probes the book’s key terms in light of a real-world study of an "empathy device" that aims to teach the public what it feels like to be disabled. Chapter 3 analyses how theatre intervenes in the practice of medicine via standardized patient actors who engage in role play to enhance medical students’ empathy for patients coping with shame. Chapter 4 moves from the clinic to the street to examine how The Raging Grannies’ public performances contest ageist constructions of older women’s bodies and desires. Chapter 5 shifts further from the bedside to the book by exploring Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home, which challenges the shame projected onto homosexuals. Bringing the study full circle, the final chapter offers close readings of the stories of Alice Munro; like empathy devices, her texts restage scenes of shame to undo its malevolent spell.This book will be of interest to scholars in theatre and performance studies, health humanities, gender studies, queer studies, literary studies, disability studies, and affect studies.

This collection advocates languages-based, translational research to be part of the partnerships and collaborations required to make sense of, and respond to, COVID-19 as one of the major global challenges of our time.Bringing together scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines, this volume is bound by a common thread stressing the importance of linguistic sensitivity, (inter)cultural knowledge and translational mediation in the frontline response to COVID-19. Featuring contributors from around the world and reflecting on the language used to frame COVID-19 in diverse cultural contexts of the Global North and Global South, the book proposes that paying attention to the transmission of ideas, ideologies, narratives and history through processes of translation results in a broadening of social, cultural and medical understandings of COVID-19. Spanning nearly 20 signed and spoken languages, the volume argues that only in going beyond an Anglophone perspective can we better understand the cultural, social and political facets of the pandemic and, in turn, produce a comprehensive, efficient global response to disease management.This book will be of interest to scholars in translation and interpreting studies, modern languages, applied linguistics, cultural studies, Deaf Studies, intercultural communication and medical humanities.

This collection advocates languages-based, translational research to be part of the partnerships and collaborations required to make sense of, and respond to, COVID-19 as one of the major global challenges of our time.Bringing together scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines, this volume is bound by a common thread stressing the importance of linguistic sensitivity, (inter)cultural knowledge and translational mediation in the frontline response to COVID-19. Featuring contributors from around the world and reflecting on the language used to frame COVID-19 in diverse cultural contexts of the Global North and Global South, the book proposes that paying attention to the transmission of ideas, ideologies, narratives and history through processes of translation results in a broadening of social, cultural and medical understandings of COVID-19. Spanning nearly 20 signed and spoken languages, the volume argues that only in going beyond an Anglophone perspective can we better understand the cultural, social and political facets of the pandemic and, in turn, produce a comprehensive, efficient global response to disease management.This book will be of interest to scholars in translation and interpreting studies, modern languages, applied linguistics, cultural studies, Deaf Studies, intercultural communication and medical humanities.

This book adopts an innovative approach in exploring the evolution of fitness practices among a community of gym goers amid a global pandemic, considering its impact on the interplay of the words, habits, and relationships gym goers use in realizing their aspirations of wellness and well-being.Perrino and Reno introduce a multilayered framework which combines insights from linguistic and sociocultural anthropology, integrating narrative analysis, discourse analysis, and ethnography, with autoethnography. This approach allows for a holistic portrait of the gym as a research site and of fitness as a fruitful area for dynamic cross-disciplinary study. The volume explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped attitudes and practices around fitness, drawing on audio and video recordings and the authors’ lived experiences to analyze everything from workout choreography to micro-celebrity fitness culture to group classes. The book raises key questions around what it means to be well amid a pandemic, the practical dangers of realizing fitness goals in such times, the effects on the social relationships inherent to gym culture, and the impact on identity construction and self-reflection.This volume will appeal to scholars interested in the interdisciplinary study of fitness, in such areas as linguistic anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, health humanities, and sport studies.

This book adopts an innovative approach in exploring the evolution of fitness practices among a community of gym goers amid a global pandemic, considering its impact on the interplay of the words, habits, and relationships gym goers use in realizing their aspirations of wellness and well-being.Perrino and Reno introduce a multilayered framework which combines insights from linguistic and sociocultural anthropology, integrating narrative analysis, discourse analysis, and ethnography, with autoethnography. This approach allows for a holistic portrait of the gym as a research site and of fitness as a fruitful area for dynamic cross-disciplinary study. The volume explores how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped attitudes and practices around fitness, drawing on audio and video recordings and the authors’ lived experiences to analyze everything from workout choreography to micro-celebrity fitness culture to group classes. The book raises key questions around what it means to be well amid a pandemic, the practical dangers of realizing fitness goals in such times, the effects on the social relationships inherent to gym culture, and the impact on identity construction and self-reflection.This volume will appeal to scholars interested in the interdisciplinary study of fitness, in such areas as linguistic anthropology, sociocultural anthropology, health humanities, and sport studies.

This volume explores the variable meanings and discourses of historical and contemporary pandemics to rethink theories and practices of planetary health.Rather than conflating the planetary with anthropogenic climate change, planetary geo-engineering, or the "global," the volume elaborates a version of planetary health humanities that invites decolonial, creative, and pluridisciplinary modes of thinking and sees "health" as a complex non-anthropocentric process that moves within the multiple scales of the planetary. The volume offers new historical trajectories as it considers an eighteenth-century woman author’s readings of plague, intersecting narratives of nineteenth-century lactation and vaccination, and the forgotten biopolitics of NASA’s Planetary Quarantine Program. It offers accounts of decolonial and oracular planetary health, insists that the role of literature in the health humanities is not merely instrumental, explores viral and planetary co-inhabitations, and scrutinizes inequities faced by global health workers. The volume also includes discussions of cybernetic addiction and the complex entanglements of humans, microbes, and bees. Its concluding interview addresses the concrete impact of current planetary transformations on individual and collective health.Bringing together multiple disciplines, the volume will be of interest to students and scholars in health humanities, literary studies, postcolonial studies, medical history, and narrative medicine.

This volume explores the variable meanings and discourses of historical and contemporary pandemics to rethink theories and practices of planetary health.Rather than conflating the planetary with anthropogenic climate change, planetary geo-engineering, or the "global," the volume elaborates a version of planetary health humanities that invites decolonial, creative, and pluridisciplinary modes of thinking and sees "health" as a complex non-anthropocentric process that moves within the multiple scales of the planetary. The volume offers new historical trajectories as it considers an eighteenth-century woman author’s readings of plague, intersecting narratives of nineteenth-century lactation and vaccination, and the forgotten biopolitics of NASA’s Planetary Quarantine Program. It offers accounts of decolonial and oracular planetary health, insists that the role of literature in the health humanities is not merely instrumental, explores viral and planetary co-inhabitations, and scrutinizes inequities faced by global health workers. The volume also includes discussions of cybernetic addiction and the complex entanglements of humans, microbes, and bees. Its concluding interview addresses the concrete impact of current planetary transformations on individual and collective health.Bringing together multiple disciplines, the volume will be of interest to students and scholars in health humanities, literary studies, postcolonial studies, medical history, and narrative medicine.

This book explores the mediation and contestation of medical evidence in Wikipedia.Existing scholarship in the medical sciences has highlighted Wikipedia as a key tool for medical ‘knowledge translation’, understood as the process of accelerating the wide dissemination and implementation of the latest scientific evidence in healthcare. Little is known, however, about the people, practices and politics involved in the production of Wikipedia’s medicine and health-related content. To address this gap, this book draws on theories and methods developed in the humanities field of translation studies and over a decade of empirical research into Wikipedia to examine the social, cultural and political dimensions of medical knowledge translation in the online encyclopedia. In doing so, it not only elucidates the complexity of factors that shape what knowledge gets translated, who by, why and how. It also shows how positioning medical knowledge translation within a broader continuum of other interlingual, intralingual and inter-epistemic translational practices can open up novel transdisciplinary perspectives on the critical challenges of improving health, health literacy and healthcare worldwide.The book is ideal for health humanities researchers and students interested in the deep entanglement of medical evidence, media, power, identity and culture in today’s digital age.

This collection examines representations of Spanish queer aging through investigations of literary and cinematic representations of this demographic, offering a showcase for research on communities often made invisible due to age and sexual identity in Spanish culture with wider implications for queer aging studies research.The volume builds on theoretical foundations established by queer aging studies scholars and the ways in which queer aging differs from heterosexual aging, examining negative topics that arise in literature and film (such as the AIDS crisis, the silencing of queer aging individuals, and social stigmas against this group), in addition to positive topics (like the creation of communities and spaces for queer aging characters). Chapters are structured in conversation with one another about key themes in depictions of queer aging in Spanish culture. Several chapters examine such topics as the aging body, stereotypes and discrimination, old age tropes, and queer invisibility, while others highlight positive representations in exploring the importance of the connection to home, family, and community spaces for queer communities. The collection represents a critical step in future work on queer aging to take future research beyond the Spanish context to extend to new geographic and disciplinary borders.This book will be of interest to scholars in aging studies, gerontology studies, queer theory, health humanities, and Spanish literature and culture.

This book investigates how health interventions are imagined into being in high-income countries, drawing on over seven years of fieldwork in the self-described “global health capital” Atlanta to consider the role of storytelling in the construction of global health futures.The volume highlights the ways in which scientific storytelling is critical to our understanding of how global health futures are constructed. The book examines three value types—epistemic, ethical, and economic—central to contemporary global health and three linguistic and communicative phenomena—multimodal poetics, emplotment, and discursive circulation—significant to the constitution of these values through storytelling. In spotlighting the Atlanta metropolitan region, home to a number of prominent organizations and figures in the development of global health, the book showcases deeper insights into the future-oriented and techno-optimistic stories global health professionals tell each other, funders, and the public. Black builds on these discussions to suggest ways forward for these stories to be improved to foster greater equity and decolonization and re-imagine the future of global health.This book will be of interest to students and scholars in linguistic anthropology, medical anthropology, global health, and health humanities.