In recent years, both within and outside academic spheres, medical humanities and narrative medicine have become increasingly influential. Drawing from interdisciplinary fields in the humanities, social sciences, and the arts, medical humanities and narrative medicine present a unique lens for considering spaces and nuances of lived experiences of health and health care. Moreover, medical humanities and narrative medicine have helped to challenge traditional ways in which medicine is understood and practiced. In part, health geographers have contributed to this discussion by examining and using the humanities and the arts to explore issues at the heart of our scholarship. Yet the interrogation of the medical humanities and narrative medicine as a crux of critical analysis in health geography has been limited. We seek presenters who draw from the humanities or art in their work, particularly as they pertain to geographies of health and medicine – all broadly conceived. Through this session, we seek to open up an extended discussion about how the medical humanities and narrative medicine can be used in geographic practices. We especially encourage submissions from critical geographers, including feminist, anti-racist, queer, differently-abled, Indigenous, and myriad other scholars working at the radical edges of our discipline.
Topics include, but are not limited to:
- Pedagogy and the humanities and arts in health or medical geography
- Methods and methodologies using humanities and the arts
- Medical and Illness narratives
- Medical humanities and health inequities
- Criticality and medical humanities in geography
- Innovative, critical, or radical uses of the humanities and the arts
- Arts-based interventions into treatment of chronic illness
- Living disease, illness or disability and exploring medical humanities or narrative medicine in care
- Engaging medical humanities or narrative medicine in parenting or caring for someone with disease, illness or dis/ability
- Theorizing the humanities and art
- Visualization and art
- Literary or performance art, medical humanities, and geography
Please contact the American Association of Geographers Meeting (AAG) organisers, either Sarah de Leeuw or Courtney Donovan by October 28 if you are interested in being part of the sessions, have any questions for us, or would like more information generally about the session(s).